If Only I Knew Where to Find Him

Passage: Job 23

Recently my wife and I concluded we had to do some “sleep training” with our two-year-old. We’d been on vacation, and when we returned, our very sociable toddler wasn’t that interested in staying in her bed after lights out. For two weeks after we arrived home we’d hear her door pop open at fifteen minute intervals for an hour after we tucked her in. Then she’d show up at our bedside every two hours all night long, only to wake up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 5:30 every morning. Something had to be done. We implemented the drastic measure of latching her door during the hour following her bedtime. The first time we did it she was incensed (to put it mildly). She tried her doorknob several times and when she couldn’t open it she started to yell. We said, calmly, that it was time for her to go to sleep and that she needed to tuck herself back in bed. She threw the tantrum to end all tantrums. She screamed and cried for my wife and me to let her out. She said she needed a drink (she had one in her room). She said she needed the potty (she’d already gone several times as a stalling technique before lights-out). She started to slow down after half an hour, simply calling out, “Daddy? Mommy?” When we didn’t answer she said, “SOMEBODY?” She was certain she’d been abandoned to an unhappy fate. She was unaware that, for that hour, I was sitting just outside her door. And that, softy that I am, I really just wanted to go open the door and tuck her in one more time and give her one more goodnight hug and kiss. For her sake and ours, our daughter had to learn to stay in her bed at night. So I curbed my instinct to comfort, steeled myself, and stayed on the other side of the door.

In chapter 23 Job laments the feeling of being abandoned by God. He cries out from a place of anger and fear and confusion. And his God is silent. Job concludes that God must be out of range. He says, “If only I knew where to find God! No matter where I go God is silent. And no matter what I do God seems intent on carrying out this conspiracy against me.”

God is often silent when we most need to hear his voice. When we most need an explanation for circumstances that have aligned against us, we get nothing. When we most need a word of reassurance and comfort we hear nothing but the echo of our own cries. Perhaps God isn’t there.
Or perhaps he’s closer than we think. Perhaps he’s just on the other side of the door - listening, waiting, and wanting more than anything to interrupt a lesson we need to endure.