Unseen, Not Unkept

Today’s readings.

There are moments in the spiritual life when we are tempted to conclude that God has withdrawn. Isaiah gives voice to that experience: “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” That line struck me this morning because we live in an age saturated with connection via social media, and yet, studies show that a large number of us are marked by a persistent loneliness. We are reachable at any moment, visible to many, and still carry a steady sense of being unseen. That loneliness often becomes the lens through which we interpret God himself. If no one seems to notice, remain, or stay, then perhaps God is the same. 

But God’s response to us is a familiar and profoundly moving image: a mother and her child. Even if that bond could fail, his will not. The point is not that we will always feel accompanied, but that God’s faithfulness is not measured by our experience of it. What we call absence is often the limit of our perception, not the limit of his presence. Like a child who cries out thinking she has been left alone, not yet able to grasp that her mother is still near, so too we often mistake the limits of our perception for the limits of God’s presence. Lent is a period to retrain the heart, learning not to equate silence with abandonment, or longing with neglect, but to recognize that even in the ache of loneliness, we are being embraced.

Today’s practice — Prayer:

Notice one moment today when you feel the pull of loneliness, even in a room full of people or while scrolling alone. Pause and say quietly: “Even here, You are with me.” Stay there for a minute, letting the longing become a moment of encounter rather than something to avoid.