Lord, I want to see!

Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me, said the blind man. Look at my misery, abandon me not, and reject me not. You are my only hope in this hopeless place. This is the meaning of the plea a blind man made as Jesus entered into Jericho.

This cry of abandonment captures the experience of so many human beings who live in despair, who search endlessly for meaning in a cruel, chaotic, unjust world. It is also a cry of help from people who feel that God has abandoned them, that God is hiding from them.

The “hidden God” is a challenge, for if there is a God, and just about everybody at one time or other doubts even this part, He seems to be hiding. This may sound like a very modern malaise, but the complaint is not new. Yet the problem is not “finding” God; as C.S. Lewis observed: “to speak of man’s search of God is like speaking of the mouse’s search for the cat”. The problem is not “finding” God, but how do we let ourselves be found by a hidden God.