Who Commands the Soul When I Cannot See?
The difficulty many Christians experience when contemplating the Trinity rarely arises in moments of calm, silent contemplation from behind the study desk. The difficulty keenly emerges when life is heavy. It appears when prayer feels strained and when God’s presence is not immediately perceived. Most often, the setting of Trinitarian difficulty occurs when we suffer or are deeply disappointed, and doubts begin to press theology into service.
It is in moments of despair, desperation, hopelessness, anguish, pain, or unhappiness that we ask in our hearts, “Can the God we confess still be trusted, known, and worshipped when He is not felt?” God calls us in numerous places in holy Scripture to contemplation, especially when we are experiencing difficulties of any kind (Ps. 46:10). Consider Jeremiah’s contemplation as he experienced anguish in his soul,
Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?
Will you be to me like a deceitful brook, like waters that fail? (Jeremiah 15:18)
What we see here is Jeremiah’s soul laid open before the Lord, raw and undiluted. Jeremiah is deeply wounded and places that wound relationally between Himself and the Lord. These two questions aren’t byproducts of unbelief but spring forth from deep relational honesty. Only someone who truly believes that God was there would risk speaking to Him like that. By bringing up the “deceitful brook” he dares to ask aloud the question that resides in the deepest recesses of his heart, “Have you failed me?” In his heart, he is asking, “Can you still be trusted, Lord?”
Notice how Jeremiah does not move away from the Lord when his soul is in anguish. He does not chase silence apart from God, nor does he reach for something to numb the weight of his present reality. Have you ever allowed a wound to become a wall between you and the Lord? Jeremiah does something far different. He brings his wound into the presence of God rather than using it as an excuse to leave that presence. Think carefully about the ways you have tried to dull your own suffering. Have you buried yourself in busyness, leaving no time for lament? What about the quiet sedatives we reach for? Anesthetics such as: entertainment, food, drink, endless scrolling, pornography, overtraining—anything that can dull the ache without ever healing it. So often, we create what might be called functional distance between ourselves and the Lord whenever we are wounded. Functional distance is the soul learning relief itself without reliance upon God. It is the heart that whispers to itself a subtle refusal: “I won’t curse Him, but I also won’t need Him right now.”
How often have you settled for godless silence? “For God alone my soul waits in silence” (Ps. 62:5) is the Psalmist’s confession. But there is an inversion of that posture that feels mature, yet is spiritually corrosive. It is a silence that refuses both complaint and communion, where reverence is replaced by resignation. This resignation is not the quiet trust described by the Psalmist, but the soul’s withdrawal from prayer, a silence that no longer waits upon God, but replaces Him. Scripture is neglected lest it speak; God is not accused, but neither is He addressed. He is not confronted, He is treated as though He were simply absent. Set that beside Jeremiah, and the contrast is striking. Jeremiah refuses this kind of silence. He would rather risk accusing God of being a “deceptive brook” than stop speaking to Him altogether.
The question that emerges in seasons of darkness is not first whether God can still be known, but whether He will still be acknowledged as Lord when He is no longer felt. When light is withdrawn and the soul is left without sensible assurance, faith is tested not at the level of comprehension, but at the level of allegiance. In such moments, the heart does not cease to love or to obey; rather, it is exposed, and reveals what voice it will follow when God’s presence is obscured. Isaiah 50:10 addresses precisely this condition, calling the one who walks in darkness and has no light not to recover clarity or summon feeling, but to trust in the name of the LORD and to lean upon his God. Jeremiah’s anguished protest gives this command a human voice. Though wounded and bewildered, Jeremiah does not turn from God in order to preserve himself; he turns toward God with his wound intact, refusing to grant silence, distraction, or self-rule the authority that belongs to the Lord alone. In this way, Jeremiah embodies the obedience Isaiah commands. Trust here is not born of felt presence, nor is obedience delayed until consolation returns. God remains God even when He is hidden, and the soul remains accountable to Him even when perception fails. Faith, therefore, is not sustained by what is seen or felt, but by the ordered love that continues to cling to God when there is no light.
Rev. Christian Leto | Founder