disappointment with God

(from Yancey's Disappointment With God, page 47 & 48) "For a time God did show up in person, and a man spoke to him face to face as he might speak with a friend. They met together, God and Moses, in a tent pitched just outside the Israelite camp. The rendezvous was no secret. Whenever Moses trudged over to the tent to talk with God, the whole camp turned out to watch. ... And yet what happened during those days almost defies belief. When Moses climbed the sacred mountain stormy with the signs of God's presence, those people who had lived through the ten plagues of Egypt, who had crossed the Red Sea on dry ground, who had drunk water from a rock, who were digesting the miracle manna in their stomachs at that moment - those same people got bored or impatient or rebellious or jealous and apparently forgot all about their God. ... God did not play hide-and-seek with the Israelites; they had every proof of his existence you could ask for. ... The Israelites responded not with worship and love, but with fear and open rebellion. God's visible presence did nothing to improve lasting faith."

And yet.

I [finally] finished reading a book that a friend from my time in India gave me just before leaving. They knew what they were getting themselves into when they accepted me for the internship. With good counsel, I had not made secret what I had recently gone through or was currently going through - and those wonderful people that I worked with, housed with, ate with, worshipped with, accepted the risk that I thought I was. I did experience some times of strong emotion - and not necessarily just around the days of a year out of my dad's death, or his first birthday non-anniversary. I read the book of Job as if I were back in English AP class, dissecting the text for every bit of anything. I so wanted to feel God's presence again, His arms around me holding me up lest I fall.

But maybe sometimes it is better not to have the direct encounter. Because I continued to seek Him, I found beauty and peace. That's not to say that I still do not wish God would say, 'I know I did the direct communication and visible presence thing with the Israelites and it did not work out well for them ... but I will give it another shot.' With the knowledge that God wants me to do this or that, it would make planning specifically much easier. I'm just saying ...