Today at the hospital I was reading a prayer book that someone had left in the chaplain’s office. It had a prayer based on a verse from Isaiah. I can’t recall the verse, but the idea was that god can be trusted for the future because god has always been there in the past.
I read the verse a couple of times and realized that this has not be my experience. I have never felt that god has been there for me. I can look back over my life and list situation after situation from which I was not saved, healed or given comfort. In fact, I cannot recall a time when I felt that god’s presence was with me during a really nasty stretch of life. I know all about the footprints poem, where god is said to carry us, but I have not felt carried. I have walked through so much in my life and I have done so basically alone.
This lament of, “Why have you forsaken me?” is timeless. It is only in this timelessness that I find any comfort whatsoever. I can read all sorts of things from scripture to medieval poetry confirming that god has left many of us feeling completely abandoned.
My response to the Isaiah reading today was first to cry and then ask god why, “Why in fact have you never been there for me?” I didn’t get an answer, but then, I didn’t expect one either. However, in the asking, somehow the loneliness that permeates all the days of life was lifted just a tiny bit.
