When your soul seizes up!

Hennie Symington

My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

Why art thou so far from helping me,

and from the words of my roaring?

       O my God, I cry in the daytime, but thou hearest not;

Psalm 22:1-2a

But he himself went a day's journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O LORD, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers. And as he lay and slept under a juniper tree, behold, then an angel touched him, and said unto him, Arise and eat. 1 Kings 19:4-5

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? \As it is written,

For thy sake we are killed all the day long;

We are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.

Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us. Romans 8:35a,37 (KJV)

Soul solstice

There comes a time in everyone’s life when you find yourself in the no-man’s-land of faith. At times like these it feels as if nothing or no-one can rescue you from the desolation of “dark night of the soul” where you doubt the existence of a God who hears, a God who sees and a God who answers.

This is a time of great silence. Not only does it feel as if God does not answer, but in yourself you feel powerless in prayer. It’s not that you deny the existence of God, you simply just don’t have it in you to call on him.

Wait expectantly

When this happens, it’s a time for lying low. This is not the time to make statements about a God who isn’t there or a God who doesn’t care. This is a time of waiting in the expectation that God will answer as he has done in times gone by. Perhaps this is a good time to visit the gallery of the hopeless, those believers who felt that God had abandoned them: Elijah in the desert; Job on the rubbish heap; David hiding in a cave; Jesus calling from the cross: “My God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

Our comfort in times like these is that this silence before God is often the fertile ground for a new understanding of your faith, your life as well as the depth and the height of God’s mercy. Believe and trust that you will hear the “still, small voice” of God assuring you of his presence and the sure knowledge that you will arise with Christ into a new life.

Prayer for today

Oh Lord, be the voice in my heart reassuring me of your eternal presence in my life. Amen