A Lovely Shade Of Blue: Does God Seem To Be Absent From Your Life?
"God is a parent to us and we are his children. All parents know that older children need personal space in order to learn how to be independent. If you feel that God has withdrawn from you, it may be a sign that He wants you to grow strong by learning how to do something on your own,'' suggests Claire George.
Mother Teresa of Calcutta was probably the most famous Christian of the 20th century. She dedicated decades to helping the poor on the streets of India. If you had seen her in those days you might have thought that she had a daily hotline to God.
It was only after her death in 1997 that the world discovered that Mother Teresa lived for decades without any sense of God's presence. From the 1950s onwards she felt abandoned by Jesus. In 1959 she wrote: "In my soul I feel just that terrible pain of loss ... of God not wanting me — of God not being God — of God not existing."
In Christian tradition this prolonged sense of God's absence is known as the long dark night of the soul. It sounds like a terrible thing, but handled in the right way it can improve your relationship with God.
God is a parent to us and we are his children. All parents know that older children need personal space in order to learn how to be independent. If you feel that God has withdrawn from you, it may be a sign that He wants you to grow strong by learning how to do something on your own.
God is a spiritual being who wants a reciprocal relationship with you. He is complete in Himself and does not need you, but He rejoices when you seek Him out. If you always feel Him close to you, you will never need to seek him out. You and God will never experience together that joyous moment when you overcome your despair at his absence and say "darn it all, I'm going looking for you."
As we get older our spirituality changes and we need to learn new things. The dark night gives us a push to renew our spiritual lives.
With the help of her spiritual director Mother Teresa decided that her dark night helped her to identify with the sense of abandonment felt by Jesus on the cross and by the poor on India's streets. Some say that Mother Teresa's dark night was the reason why she worked so hard to help others feel God's love.
