When God seems absent

During the preparation of a worship service, I was asked to answer this question:

What are the moments in your life which make it hard for you to see God’s presence?

Praise God, I am so grateful that these days, it’s not difficult for me to see God’s presence in my life, mainly because I’ve found myself in a special place, and more specifically, in the heart of a loving and wonderful congregation. So I don’t really have those moments. But there was a time in my life, a long time ago, when God seemed absent to me, and this was when I was going to university and when I started working in medical science. The world that I had found myself in was a huge barrier to feeling God’s presence, and it was a big challenge to my faith.

I worked in the field of molecular biology, basically experimenting with DNA. The vast majority of my peers and colleagues were staunch atheists. Science was everything, and God was a myth. I was young and impressionable, and I was listening to highly respected professionals in their fields. I began to question: Is there a God? Are people just kidding themselves that God exists? Looking back on this time in my life, I feel quite, well, the only word I can think of is, sorry, and kinda stupid too. When a person spends most of their waking time thinking, and experimenting, basically living in their own heads (that’s what a lot of scientists do)… then their spiritual health suffers, God is pushed right out of the picture.

There were about fifteen people working in our laboratory. One of my colleagues was different. Jeff was a Christadelphian. I had no idea what that was, but he didn’t hide the fact that he was Christian. He was the calmest person there: he was caring, quiet and hardworking, and he always had a smile. I never saw him cross or upset. He was amazingly patient, especially with students. Even though he was surrounded by non-believers, he was happy to talk about his faith to anyone who asked him about it. He was very unselfconscious. In retrospect, I should have spent more time talking to Jeff. So God wasn’t actually absent, he was there in the laboratory all the time, visible and present in the life of my Christadelphian friend.

In the hearts and minds of many of the people around me back then, God wasn’t just absent, he didn’t exist at all. And now when I think about it, that really saddens me, that these people who I cared about and respected were, and possibly still are, living without God in their lives. So that’s why it’s so important for us to pray for all those people who don’t see God’s presence, that they may one day soon respond to the grace and love that flows from God to all his children. And that’s why bearing witness to Christ is so vital. Jesus suffered and died to draw all people to himself, and we’re helping Jesus on that mission.