In the valley

Where is God when it hurts?

The short answer

When it hurts most, God can feel most absent, but Scripture places Him closest to the ones who are suffering. He does not promise to keep you out of the valley; He promises to walk through it with you, and He is near to the brokenhearted.

When the pain is at its worst, God can feel the most absent, and that silence is its own kind of agony. If that is where you are, you are not failing at faith. You are in the company of nearly everyone in the Bible who ever suffered.

The promise Scripture makes is not that God will keep you out of the valley. It is that He walks through it with you.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
Psalm 23:4

“He healeth the broken in heart, and bindeth up their wounds.”
Psalm 147:3

God is close to exactly this

The Bible does not send God to the winners and the strong. Again and again it puts Him closest to the crushed, the grieving, the ones at the bottom. Jesus was called a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief. When it hurts, you are not outside His attention. You may be nearer to His heart than you have ever been.

“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
Matthew 5:4

God, I cannot feel You, and it hurts. If You are here in this dark, help me know it. Walk with me through this valley. I am not letting go of You. Amen.
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