For Matt, life seemed pretty normal. Wife, kids, house, good job, all the usual stuff. But he felt empty. Worse than empty. All the while he kept thinking, “Why aren’t I happy?”
In large part, it was because all those “good” things had crowded God out of the center of his life. And then when it all started to fall apart – it felt like the whole world was closing in on him. He was distanced from God and felt distanced from people too. And the distance seemed to grow and grow. The way back to “good” seemed impossible.
For Matt and maybe you today reading this, it is a sort of exile. You see, because of sin, all of humanity was and is in a complete state of exile from God. But it was Jesus who opened a door from eternal exile to eternal life through His cross and resurrection. Believing in Him offers the ultimate second chance.
Now, this book of Lamentations from the Bible (passage below) is the voice of the exiled Hebrews – a poetic mix of grief, hope, tears, confusion, remembrance, and faith. It captures the thoughts and feelings of God’s people, who were in relationship with God by way of their covenant with Him, at their lowest point – dislocated from their promised land and held captive far away – but worse – distanced from God.
“And yet, God, you’re sovereign still, your throne intact and eternal. So why do you keep forgetting us? Why dump us and leave us like this? Bring us back to you, God – we’re ready to come back. Give us a fresh start. As it is, you’ve cruelly disowned us. You’ve been so very angry with us.” Lamentations 5:19-22 (The Message)
Everything they counted on, knew and understood just evaporated. I’ve known what that’s like. Maybe you have been there too. And we will probably be there someday again.
Today, we experience exile or distance from God and others in many ways. But always at the heart of it is a loss of Jesus being the center of our lives. Sometimes, like God’s people in Lamentations, they had been warned and warned by the prophets to turn back to God – and they didn’t. Sometimes we turn away from God and others because of guilt, hurt and disappointment.
In his book, The Prodigal God (I highly recommend – our staff read and discussed it together), Tim Keller takes the story often known as the prodigal son in Luke 15 and describes two kinds of exile. One is of the prodigal son and brother – the one who asks for his share of the inheritance and wastes it all on partying. But then returns to the father to find open and arms and second chance. The other exile is the older brother who refuses to join in the celebration of the younger brother’s return. This kind of exile, according to Tim Keller, is due to self-righteousness and a belief that by doing things “right” God owes us – and the anger that comes from not getting what we think God “owes” us.
However we arrive at exile, it is an awful experience. Especially the isolation and the disorientation. From the Garden of Eden to the Exile to the garden of Gethsemane and the cross – separation from God, whether we understand it as that or not, is the worst pain in human experience. It is to be separated from the source of life. We were designed to be in full, authentic relationship with God and with others.
But sometimes we can even be in church and around other believers and still exist in a state of exile. Just out of reach for connection and community. This makes it all the more difficult. A kind of relative spiritual depravation. In other words, everyone else “seems” to be enjoying God and community. That is hard. On a lighter note, we can find this thinking behind the idea of “Time Out” as a consequence for children.
Yet, Lamentations and other parts of the Word show that exile is redemptive – it has a purpose and an end. It seems that God uses times of exile to teach us that He is in fact the center and that joy can only come from dependence and desire for Him above all things. The distance and separation left God’s people and us today crying out for Him in ways like never before. It can open our hearts, minds and lives to experiencing God in new and very alive ways.
For it is in exile that perhaps for the first time, we find a truer, more authentic voice for approaching, praising and beseeching God. For it is exile that perhaps for the first time we truly understand the mercy and grace of God through Jesus and how much we need it – need Him and need our brothers and sisters. And it is in that season or moment that exile can transform and translate into homecoming. But ultimately it’s God timing.
For Matt, for God’s people then, and for you and me, thankfully there was and is a way back. It’s not always easily visible for a while, the timing is usually not our timetable and it will cost us. But sometimes in life, in a life of faith, just knowing, just holding onto the fact that there is a way back can make the difference between living and dying, between quitting and hanging on, between throwing it all away and a fresh start and second chance. Knowing though, that a fresh start with God would involve transformation – letting go of some things and starting some new things.
So the question is, how much longer are we willing to live with the peculiar comfort of the emptiness as well as the episodic pangs of despair?
Living Water 