God appears silent, distant, disengaged. Our hope is he is really there. The fact that we even consider him is because we believe  we have experienced him, not in our reason alone, but in his felt presence. We may have been told about him, but unless we have encountered him, he is not there.

As a friend, it would be a deception to try to persuade you; truth, beauty, and justice are everywhere, but so is ugliness, suffering, and despair. In fact, the goodness that is creation is concealed by death. Every particle operates to preserve itself, and even life itself is selfish. The vastness of space, though awesome, appears empty and threatening, and life is cruel. Yes, at the heart of trying to know, there is falsehood and deception in ourselves that leads us from seeing things as they are. Can we ever know we have encountered God?

For God to be true and good, he, in his very essence, must be uncoersive love, not insisting on his own way and a fountain of forgiveness. How else are we to be saved, except if God is not steadfast in love, ever drawing us to himself? Truly, he speaks out creation in chaos, and the sound of his voice is sheer silence. He speaks out new creation in the chaos of our lives, and we only know this because we love as he loves us. We love as our hearts teach us to love.

As a teacher, I am careful not to leap in with the answer when a pupil has a problem. I hope they will look again and, if I do well, I guide them to see their own solution. Sometimes, I try to figure it out with them, not taking the lead.

When I don’t give an answer, they may get frustrated and may even doubt whether I can solve the problem. My silence is intended to spur them on to solve it for themselves.

It’s a matter of growth. When they were new to the task, they needed help, but they need to get beyond my help. To progress, they must engage and trust themselves, disrupting what they already know. My silence is necessary if they are to progress and move further than I can lead.

God is ever present, ever knowing and anticipating our every breath, holding us. We can be reassured that we are held. Moment by moment, he is pouring out self giving love.

Love empowers us to be true to God, trusting that even in his silence, he is guiding us so that we are freed to do his will. Daily, we set our plans before him, seeking to obey his command to love. His presence, known or unknown, enables us to walk in truth, beauty, and justice, and we grow to recognise his voice in all things. Truly, we become like him.

Our goal is to walk with him, unhindered and unfettered. In this veil of death, the promise is beyond the horizon, and everything senses its draw, groaning for it to be revealed. It’s a call back to the garden of Eden, a paradise lost. From the Chaos of our first parents’ sin in a creation made very good, our present creation is formed in death. This is not a point in time but in a reality formed in anticipation; we are in an altered state of being, which from the beginning knew the lamb that was slain yet was very good. And so, out of the very real loss of paradise, all creation carries the mark of death. Eden is beyond myth, it is the mystery revealed on the cross of Christ that drives us to the consumation of all things in the fact of the risen Christ, now and forever in the coming new creation when heaven joins earth once more in our resurection in him.

‭John 15:13-17 NRSV‬
No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

You are my friends if you do what I command you. I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.

You did not choose me but I chose you. And I appointed you to go and bear fruit, fruit that will last, so that the Father will give you whatever you ask him in my name.

I am giving you these commands so that you may love one another.

https://bible.com/bible/2016/jhn.15.13-17.NRSV