We see in the Old Testament a definite challenge for God in revealing Himself to His post-fall creation. Through the moral divide, God revealed a cultic system of ritual expression which allowed the people to relate to God on a practical and tangible level. Yet, His face was hidden from the masses. On an individual basis, the people could only approach God through His pre-selected surrogates; Moses, the priest, the judges, the king or the prophets. It appears this restriction on personal and direct interaction is just as much about our God who chose to conceal His fullness as it was about the people who feared to see His glory. The temple, God’s chosen place for communal relationship, was the other area of interaction. Yet here again this place of group-worship was divided so that only the chosen few could enter into the fullness of God’s presence. God was concealed and hidden in the inner place, and the people feared to see Him because of their sin.

In the days of Christ, we know that God walked the earth. Jesus said that if you have seen me you have seen the Father. No clearer statement could be made to say that Christ was God in human flesh, the one who came to reveal what was once hidden. Yet even in this incarnate revelation of God, there was still a divide. How? Jesus, in the flesh, was only manifest to a few people, in an isolated region of the world for only a minuscule period of time in history. Beyond this, the experience of the disciples at the transfiguration indicates that even in this fully-divine human revelation, God’s glory and majesty were still in some way shielded from Man. In Jesus, we see that God was revealed as never before. The face of God was made real in Christ, but somehow He remained concealed. God’s plan for full disclosure of self, however, did not end with Jesus.

Before Jesus ascended, He promised that we, His disciples, would not be left alone. He promised that another comforter would come. He promised that the Spirit would come to baptize each believer into union with God. The temple veil has been torn asunder, the covenant priesthood has been internalized and our brokenness of the fall has been healed for now Christ dwells in us. Yet, in some way, God is still hidden. How? Hidden not in the sense that He must conceal some of Himself so that we can maintain our free will, but hidden from us because we are not yet fully glorified in Christ. Even if we were to see the unhindered fullness of God, this in no way would constrain the freedom of choice given to Man.

Through God’s written Word, we have been granted the privilege of seeing the glory of God. The law revealed His loving-holiness, the incarnation revealed God’s Fatherly love, and the Spirit has revealed His passion and glory. There is nothing of God’s nature or character concealed from His children. But the fact that He has shown Himself to us, does not mean we can see and comprehend His totality of being. The things of God we do not see are what we are not able to comprehend. The fullness of His self-disclosure is obscured, not because of some self-imposed divine limitation, but because we maintain these bodies of flesh.

At times God may seem distant or hidden, but this is not done to preserve our independence, but so that He might increase our dependence. We must search for God; seek to keep Him at the center of our being. We must strive to renew our loving relationship each day, to grow in grace and build upon the successes of the days gone by. When we are confronted with the paradox of God’s revelation and hiddenness, we must remember that He loves us and wants us to love Him enough to seek Him out beyond our flesh. We must move beyond the artificial veil of hiddenness and find security in the arms of our Father.

Our ultimate hope is that we learn to relate to God and one another in a way that reflects His covenant-love. God desires that we be grounded in relationship that brings renewal and fosters a sense of being grounded in His image. In the end, we are to reign with Him through each moment of each day in the actions we take and work we accomplish. The implicit demand of these things is that we learn to make each day a Sabbath unto the Lord. The Christian who has new-life is not constrained by the external cultic practice of the Old Covenant, but subsumed by the internal practice of living out the presence of God. Our lives as Sons of God are far less about Sabbath-keeping and far more about Sabbath-living.

As we live each day in Sabbath rest, what can we say about the dark moments of life when all seems quiet? Where is God when trials come and all we hear is silence? Has God left us alone? Has He concealed or hidden His face from us to teach us some lesson? In these times I think back to the story of Elijah in First Kings where we read how he stood upon the mountain top to hear from the Lord. But the Lord’s presence could not be found in the stormy winds, it was not in the rumbling quake, and God could not be found in the burning flames. Where was God? Had He Hidden himself from the prophet? No, soon there came a small and gentle breeze and in this quiet moment, Elijah found hope; he discovered God was always there.

So too, when we reach our dark moments, we often hear the silence and feel that God has left us. Some encounter the blackness and think it is the absence of God. The lesson of Elijah is that often God is not to be found in the big and dramatic forces, but in the quiet stillness of our life. God is not absent in that dark night, He is the dark night. When we sit in the dark, it does not matter if our eyes are closed or open, there is still only darkness. When trials come, we do not find God by looking, we find Him by resting and waiting. When we reach the expanse of barren existence, there God is most present. He has not hidden Himself at all, for He is there; in us, with us, around us.

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