Spiritual Hiccups - Show Yourself!

But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.  We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.  There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity.  Yet, O LORD, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand.  Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all  your people.  (from Isaiah 64)

What striking words.  Because God hid Godself, we sinned.  We falter because God has disappeared.  Usually it is stated the other way round.  We sinned and so God has abandoned us to our own devices, but Isaiah here inverts that usual pattern.  And who hasn't occasionally felt this way?  I certainly have sometimes said, "God, I will do what you want, if only you will show me what that is." 

I wonder if a meaningful relationship with God doesn't require that we, from time to time, call God into account.  I know this sounds odd to many, but the Old Testament writers certainly have no problem insisting that God remember, that God honor covenant, that God stir Godself.  And when Jesus quotes Psalm 22 from the cross, what is that but a cry to God pleading, "Show yourself!"

I realize that relationship with God is not a relationship between equals, but is there such thing as a true relationship when one cannot express her longings, her frustrations, her hopes, her fears, her needs to God?  Can there be relationship with God when we cannot be honest with God?

I can fully appreciate those who would say that God does not need to be reminded or prodded or cajoled.  But I wonder if humans are capable of true relationship with another where there is not some struggling.  Can we grow in relationship with another, including God, without an engagement that sometimes sounds like today's words from the prophet?

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