Biography
Dr. Lewis Smedes was educated at Calvin Theological Seminary and the Free University of Amsterdam. He is ordained in the Reformed Church of America and taught for over twenty-five years at Fuller Theological Seminary. Dr. Smedes is the author of many popular books of theology, including Forgive and Forget, Caring and Commitment, and A Pretty Good Person. He is now retired from teaching, but continues to travel as a visiting preacher and to write from his home in Sierra Madre, California. [Biographical information is correct as of the broadcast date noted above.]

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          and 30 Good Minutes.

"When God Goes on Leave of Absence" 
If you have lived as long as I have, you have probably found yourself, now and then, in deep trouble and you asked God to help and he did not seem to hear. You knocked at this door and nobody was home. Gone on vacation. Heaven was silent. And you began to wonder whether God had gone on leave of absence and left you alone. If it hasn’t happened to you yet, stick around awhile, it just may. And when it does happen, you may find yourself asking God the most painful question that anyone who believes in him can ever ask: Why have you gone off and left me to suffer alone? Oh God, why have you let me down?

You won’t be the first person to ask God this question, not by a long shot. David, one of the most beloved writers in the entire Bible, in the very first verse of Psalm 22, asks the same question you may have felt like asking once in a while in your life: My God, my God, why, why have you abandoned me?

Mind you, he’s not asking whether there is a God. He knows that God exists. But what good does it do if God exists out there somewhere in the great beyond but isn’t down here when we need him? It is precisely because we believe that he exists that it hurts so much when he is not here to help us in our time of trouble.

David believed with all his heart that God would be with him even in the most God-forsaken situations. I want you to listen to my paraphrase of his words in my favorite of all Psalms 139. Listen to this trust: "When I feel as if I am going over the edge, the bottom is falling out beneath me, I’ll not be afraid because you, O God, will be there to hold me up when I fall. When I am lost in the dark and can’t find my way, and I’m afraid I’m going to stumble and break my neck, you, O God, will take my hand and lead me through. Even when life is hell on earth, I trust you. I trust you to be there. I trust you to be there with me, and you will not let me down." Now that is trust.

But it’s always hardest when you trust someone to be there for you and it feels as if he’s really let you down. This is why we find David calling to a silent heaven and demanding to know: Why have you deserted me in my time of trouble? David trusted God, and He wasn’t there.

I have asked the same question more than once. Maybe you have, too. And if you haven’t put it into words, you have felt it deep in your spirit. So I want to talk to you about that question, the question to an absentee God, a God who has gone on leave of absence. There are five things that have struck me about that awful question that he asks, and I invite you to think about each one of them with me.

First of all, it was a real question.

I used to tell my students that there was no such thing as a stupid question. Any question is a good question as long as it is a real question. Sometimes people ask questions to show off that they are smart enough to ask such brilliant questions. Those are phony questions. Or they ask tricky questions just to embarrass somebody, a phony question. These are not real questions. You ask a real question when you honestly don’t know the answer and you want badly to know it.

David simply didn’t know why God had let him down. And his whole being cried out for an answer. So he went straight to God, face to face, eyeball to eyeball, and asked him, "Why have you let me down?"

It is okay to question God, as long as it is a real question, and God honors honest questions. So, if you wonder why God has let you down the Bible says: Go ahead and ask.

Have you ever noticed that the last words Jesus spoke before he died were a question? In fact it was the very same question that David asked God: Why have you let me down? He, too, asked it because he did not know and he wanted an answer. So, as long as your question is real, go right to the source and ask for an answer.

The second thing I’ve noticed about David’s question is this: it is a question that came from the heart.

It didn’t originate from his left brain. It exploded from his heart. I can tell you that when your life feels as if it is falling apart and you are dangling in the cutting winds of pain and God doesn’t lift a finger to help, you don’t ask academic questions. Your question is a child’s cry from the bottom of the heart.

It is like the cry of a little child whose mommy and daddy have gone away and she fears they won’t come back. Last year my son, Charley, and his family moved from California, where we live, to Michigan, where we used to live. As you can imagine, they talked about it a lot at home before the time came for them to pack up and go. Their four year old daughter, our lovely Emily, listened and wondered and worried about what she heard. One evening, Charley and his beautiful wife, Kim, went out to visit friends and left Emily with a babysitter. Emily went to bed, fell into a deep sleep, then had a bad dream and woke up crying for her mother. But mommy and daddy had not come home yet. So Emily wailed, "Mummy and Daddy have gone to Michigan and left me alone!"

David’s question to God was just like little Emily’s cry: God has gone to Michigan and left me dangling here alone. That’s a cry of the heart. Where is God and why has he gone away and left me alone?

Whenever a hurting heart cries out Why?, it is a cry that God respects because it deserves to be heard.

The third thing that impresses me about David’s question is this: it was a protest.

Let’s face it. This question implied a protest to God. David felt he had a right to expect God to keep his promises, to stay on the job, doing the sorts of things a good God is supposed to do. And when he is not there, he filed a protest.

Not long ago a bright and beautiful young woman I knew died at the young age of twenty-two. She had just graduated cum laude from Princeton University and stood on the launching pad for her private crusade to make the world a better place for women. Then she got Hodgkin’s disease, and she died. At her funeral the minister began his sermon this way. He said: "Dear friends, we have gathered here in the house of God to protest the death of Suzanne."

Some people thought it was not the right way for a preacher to talk at a funeral. I thought it was just right. Twenty-two year old women are not supposed to die. And if you believe in God and trust him to keep his promises, you feel like filing a protest when they do. God should have been there, one feels, and done something to keep it from happening.

No doubt about it, when David asked God why he was not there when he was needed, he was saying, "This is not the way I expect God to act, and this is not the way it’s supposed to be, and I protest."

The fourth thing that I’ve noticed about the question that God put to David is this: it takes a heap of faith to ask it.

Some people I know think that any person who questions God might be losing her faith. They are so wrong. Only somebody who trusts God to be there with her gets this hurt when God doesn’t show up. Only a person of faith dares to look God straight in the eye and ask, "Where are you when I need you?"

Consider this: Only a child who trusts her father to be there for her when she needs him complains to him when he is not around to help. Only a person who trusts God dares to complain to God. Only a person with a lot of faith dares to put it straight to the maker of the universe.

And now the fifth and last thing that has struck me profoundly about David’s question. It’s this. It’s the kind of question that can be answered only in experience.

It is the kind of question that needs an answer all right. But the only good answer comes, not in words, but in action; not in theory, but in experience.

Let me share with you the pit, the bedrock of my faith on these matters, about where God is. This is how I see it. Long ago, when the best and brightest of all the ages was at the end of his rope and it felt as if God had abandoned him, he asked the same question David asked in his time of trouble: Why? Why? And he got no answer, not in words. Heaven was silent again. No answer. Dead silence. He died without an answer from God.

But then, just three days later, before the fingers of the light had filtered through the mist of the morning, before the citizens of the city had finished their second snooze, the Almighty got into the grave where Jesus’ body lay. And the power of his creative spirit began to move inside that dead corpse. Life began to pulsate again through its dead nerves and flow like energy through its arteries like a rush of warm power. And Jesus came alive.

Jesus asked the most painful question anybody can ever ask of God, and the answer came, not with words, but with an action; not in theory, but in life. In resurrection.

So this is what I want to say to you. If you feel God has gone away on vacation and left you on your own, go straight to him. Ask a question. Raise a protest. Ask him why he is letting you down. And then you’ll have to do the hardest thing of all. Wait. Wait for him to come back the way Jesus did. Wait for him to come back and give you your own resurrection.

I know that waiting is the hardest job in the world. It is ten thousand times harder to wait than it is to rush into action. But when it feels as if God’s gone, gone on leave of absence, and you ask him why, you may have to wait for him to come back. I want to tell you that the secret of waiting is hope. Wait with hope. Wait with hope! For he will come back. He will come back! Keep on waiting. Keep on hoping. He’ll come back. He always has. And he will come back to you.

Thank you.

Interview with Lewis Smedes
Interviewed by Floyd Brown

Floyd Brown: Lew, that was a marvelous, marvelous talk that you gave us today. We truly enjoyed it. And it brings to mind certain questions and personal reactions to prayer and asking things of God. Been there, done that. Oh, Lord, what did I do? But my position generally is: What did I do, that he’s not answering me? Is that a valid position?

Lewis Smedes: I’m not sure about the validity of it. I’m sure about the commonness of it. My first reaction is what’s he getting me for? What did I do wrong? What sin did I do way back there that now he’s walloping me for? It’s a question that I deeply encourage people never to ask. Look at the life of Jesus. You can’t find anything in his life, so far as we know it, which God would ever punish him for. But he felt let down, abandoned. God had reasons that Jesus didn’t know and he wanted to know. And God doesn’t always give us his reason. By George, I wish he would! But not many of us can claim to understand God. I’d go so far as to say nobody really understands all of God. The moment you think you’ve got God cased, you know that you’re barking up the wrong tree. So, my feeling about it. You know, Floyd, I used to teach the philosophy of religion in which you deal with every question from an intellectual point of view that you can ask about God. I have never found an intellectual answer to this question that satisfies me. The only answer that I’ve found is: Wait, and keep hoping. Keep hoping, and he’ll come back.

Brown: Can you answer this one for me? They say, there are no atheists in foxholes in the battlefield. I can tell you there are no atheistic radio announcers who have lost their voice. I did for about 3 months.

Smedes: Or preachers!

Brown: Or preachers, I suppose. But, quickly, can you tell me why do we wait until the extreme moment before we turn?

Smedes: We wait for that extreme moment because we’re so short-sighted. You know, we ask: Where is God when you’re sick? We don’t ask if there’s an epidemic of health! There’s a marvelous epidemic of good things happening. And we don’t say, "how come?" How come good things happen to people that aren’t all that great?

Brown: We never ask that question.

Smedes: That’s my basic question

Brown: I got it.