Looking for God in all the wrong places?

Lately, God has been amazingly present in places I didn't expect, with a force that reminds me of days of great passion, yet wearing a face that is unfamiliar to me.  At the same time, God has been frighteningly distant - unknowable, behind a cloud, leaving me with more questions than answers and a deep sense of unease.  Same God.  Crazy pastor?

For me, God is palpably present when I am leading worship.  In those moments when I stop at the altar and call on the name of the Lord, emptying myself of the world I brought with me and opening myself to the Spirit moving among us, God is energy and presence.  It's not the same each time; some Sundays I am more dense and disagreeable.  But God is present and the Spirit is the power by which I can stand and share a Word with you all.  This is most certainly true.

Except when God is not.  Oh, I am sure that God is present among us because I trust God's promise in Jesus to be with us.  I simply cannot connect....like when the internet is down and all that you see on your screen is the message 'failure to load.'  Some Sundays, I experience a decisive failure to load.

If that happens too many weeks in a row, I panic.  (there is very little middle ground in all of this for me).  Last winter, I traveled in the darkness of God for 6 weeks.  God's presence was out of my reach, beyond my ability to draw in the Spirit's energy.  The light of the Gospel was now a darkness and I was thirsty for a clear word of grace and forgiveness - the primary arteries of God for me.

Nothing special happened to set this whole terrifying episode in motion.  One Sunday I was fully engaged and the next Sunday I was a stranger to myself, and God to me.  Suddenly the water was too deep and instead of laying back and floating, I began to thrash about and dreamt dreams about drowning.

Yet in all my crazy heroic struggles, God continued to be present.  This is the rock on which I live my life.  God is always present - bringing the sunlight through the exquisite fall colors, holding my hand in my fear, weeping with me in the great tragedies of our times, pushing me forward when I want to hold back, and standing quietly in all God's dark glory in the deepest darkness of my life.

I am told that coming to know God in the darkness is a terrifying gift - the greatest most frightening time of relationship with God.  Hmmmm.   Hmmmm.

Don't know what to say about that.