The God who Works Through
Have you ever noticed that God hides Himself? I know that hidden things are hidden because they’re valuable, but when I think deeper about the fact of His hiddenness I can’t help but wonder about Him. What does this fact reveal about His nature and attributes? What are the values of God? What is His purpose in revealing Himself like this?
Hidden
Oh, yes—much can be revealed about a thing that is hidden by the very fact of its hiddenness. How much more, then, for a person who has not simply been hidden by another, but who has hidden Himself? What could He desire to communicate to us by hiding Himself?
Vessels
Then there’s the problem of this other rather pesky fact that God has chosen to work through vessels like us. The best thing we can say about the arrangement is that we are made in His image. That is, we are like Him, and I don’t believe we’re meant to understand that in only the physical sense. We have emotions. We are reasonable, we are rational, we understand good order and right and wrong. And we have desires. We have the will to carry these out. We are like Him, only fallen far short of His glory.
God could carry out any desire He wants at any time. Since He has all power, He could, rather than bear with our infirmities, choose to end us. Or He could make us perfectly well in an instant. Instead He has chosen to subject creation to futility. He has chosen to hide Himself, with the promise that He lets Himself be found by the diligent seeker. Why is the universe so ordered? Does all this tension make it somehow better?
Pain
You know pain well. So do I. The more of life's winters I outlast, the better acquainted I become with the nuances of pain. Question: if pain motivates me toward the light, does that make pain good? I can’t answer that, but I will say that it has occurred to me that a great deal of what I used to call bad was actually turned by the Sovereign Will and used for my good, so what business do I have in calling anything either bad or good here and now? Is not God able to make a brother of an adversary?
Better to be slow to speak, even slower to judge, and to abstain from condemnation altogether. And if I am quick in anything it should be prayer, especially for others. It is written somewhere that if I give mercy in another's time of need, it will be given to me when I am in need. It is written somewhere too that love keeps no record of wrongs, and what a sweet promise this is to me. Let it direct my feet in the Way, then, even if I possess the fiery heart of a reformer.
There is one Lawgiver and Judge, and I am not Him. There is no one more qualified than God to mete justice and mercy. He cares for both.
If I am aware of pain, God knows it intimately, fundamentally. It is difficult to understand how God could offer up His own Son to the created as expiation for our utter failure and total betrayal and abandonment, sending Him to the cross to die, making Him who knew no sin to be sin, and remain righteous. What, do the ends justify the means? That’s a woefully inadequate explanation. It makes much more sense when I understand that God is both the Father and the Son, and that our redemption was accomplished in mutual love and faithfulness between them. The Son volunteered for His assignment not just before the Fall but before He made anything that He made, and He knew full well the Father’s wise plan. He is no victim, and the Father is no tyrant.
Then, gloriously, there is the Spirit of God, speaking of agency. And this agency sets a pattern for us to follow. We must never forget that while God indeed requires a death penalty for sin, He paid it all Himself. And He did it for love.
Agents Inhabited
How could God have chosen to dwell in a tent in the wilderness? How could He have “clothed Himself in a man” from time to time throughout the Old Testament wherever we see that the Spirit of God came upon someone? How could He have inhabited the Holy of Holies that Solomon built for Him?
It is the same with us, His Church. Emmanuel is still with us. He dwells within us. This was His plan all along, too, and He’s just getting started. Much greater things are in store, but for now we must apprehend His purpose: that we, these common vessels made noble by the light indwelling them, are here to shine in the darkness for a little while.
See, it is not the dust but the breath that matters.
When it comes to agency, God can use anything. He can use a tent in the wilderness, a gilded box topped with seraphim, a forgotten shepherd boy with the heart of a king, a woman with a jug of milk, a tent peg, and a hammer, an orphan girl and her uncle, a tax man, a fisherman, even a radically disobedient Israelite prophet and a random gigantic fish.
In light of these things, the question is, has God really hidden Himself at all?
When we can look at His handiwork all around us, witness His faithfulness with every sunrise and changing of season, and see Him working and moving throughout history, how could we deny that He exists? How could we deny that He loves what He has made and wants it to prosper? And how could we deny Him His right over us?
If we are indeed the sheep of His pasture, why not come into the fold?
Home: wherever He is.
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