Personal Blogs

“The absence of God is only from the perspective of the person turned away.”

C.S. Lewis

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Why Does God Not Make His Presence Known to Me?

It is a question that some Christians ask themselves. The feeling of emptiness and distance from God. There are seasons in life when we sit in a religious service, sing songs of praise, listen to prayers and pray, and yet, feel nothing. The words fall from our mouths like dry leaves, brittle with routine. We read the Bible, but it seems like a closed book. We pray, but it feels like we’re speaking into the wind. We look for God but see only the fog.

It is one of the great anguishes of sincere faith: the silence of God.

And so, we ask: Why does God not make His presence known to me?

But the question might contain its own answer. For there is a difference between God not being present and God not being perceived. As C.S. Lewis once put it, “The absence of God is only from the perspective of the person turned away.”

Like a man with his back to the sun who wonders why everything is in shadow, we may live our lives turned away from the light. We go through the motions—meetings, prayer, preaching—but like somnambulists, we are not awake.

Paul, writing to the Ephesians, reaches into this very state of spiritual drowsiness and calls it by name:

“Wake up, O sleeper,

rise up from the dead,

and Christ will shine on you.”

(Ephesians 5:14)

Here is a startling truth: Christ shines on us not when we are good or deserving or loud in our faith, but when we wake up.

We often think God is hiding. But scripture paints a different picture. God is not the elusive one; we are the distracted ones. God is the burning bush that does not consume, but we are Moses before the awakening. God is the still small voice, but we are Elijah, still storm-tossed by wind and earthquake.

We have cultivated lives of noise, busyness, and performance. We are like a man carrying a candle in full daylight and wondering why it does not shine. The Christian environment can sometimes become like wallpaper: familiar, unexamined, uninspired. We know the phrases, the creeds, the prayers. But the heart is not engaged.

In ancient wisdom, the Hebrew prophets spoke of a time when people would “These people draw near to Me with their mouths and honor Me with their lips, but their hearts are far from Me. Their worship of Me is but rules taught by men.”  That distance, the gap between the lip and the heart, is often where the silence of God is most deafening.

The Christian fathers spoke of acedia as being a kind of spiritual listlessness, a soul’s sleepwalking. Not rebellion, not wickedness, just weariness. Dante placed it among the sins of the slothful, those who let divine opportunities pass while waiting for a voice that had already spoken.

One once said that asking why God doesn’t speak is like asking why your phone doesn’t ring when it’s turned off. God may be calling, but we’re in airplane mode.

Paul’s words offer more than a rebuke; they offer a revelation:

“Woe to those who dig deep

to hide their plans from the LORD.

In darkness they do their works and say,

‘Who sees us, and who will know? “”

 (Ephesians 5:15)

This is the miracle. When we wake up, when we rise from spiritual death, we do not just see the light—we become the light. We are not meant to be passive receivers of God’s presence, but radiant reflections of it.

So why does God not make His presence known to me?

Perhaps He has.
In the rustle of trees, the wordless kindness of a stranger, the ache you feel when you watch the sunrise alone. Perhaps God has not stopped speaking, but we have stopped listening.

The call is not to wait for a dramatic sign, but to wake up. To let the light in. To notice.

Like a sleeper stirring at dawn, may we rise—not because we feel worthy, but because He has already shone the light.

And in time, like windows catching the sun, we too may shine.

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Here I go again about that Hebrew word firgun. It's one of those words you can’t unsee once you know it. It means the joy we feel when we see others happy—not for anything they’ve done for us, not because it benefits us in any way, but just because they’re happy.

My eyes filled with tears last night for someone else’s happiness. Not someone I knew. Not even someone in the same country.

My wife and I were watching YouTube together, and, as algorithms do, it fed me something it knew I’d like: a video of 200 people in a field singing Bruce Springsteen’s Waitin’ on a Sunny Day.

Bruce Springsteen "Waitin' on a sunny day" - Over 200 Belgian musicians play for Bruce Springsteen

There they were, ordinary people singing with unbridled joy, their voices rising into the summer sky like birds that had forgotten what cages were. Something in that moment loosened something in me. When my wife stirred from her dream-slumber, began singing the chorus as sunbeams burst through the blinds. Scotland’s rare sunshine had found us.

But something deeper was happening.

Richard Dawkins, the renowned atheist and evolutionary biologist wrote:

“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

This made me pause.

Because if that were true; if the core of reality is truly indifferent, how do we explain firgun?

Why would we be wired to feel joy for someone else’s joy? Why would 200 strangers in another country move me to tears? Why would a wife, half-dreaming, wake up singing a song that connects her heart to mine?

Why do love, empathy, kindness, virtue, and sacrificial acts even exist in such a universe? Why does someone throw themselves in front of a train to save a child they don’t know? Why do we applaud goodness, even when it costs us?

You see, if we are merely the product of mindless evolution, if life is nothing more than survival and replication, then firgun is a liability. Altruism is wasteful. Empathy is inefficient. Kindness is, frankly, irrational.

But we know better. Our souls testify otherwise.

The world may sometimes appear indifferent, even cruel. But these moments—these little sunlit mercies—speak of something deeper. A moral inheritance. A spiritual dimension that no algorithm or formula can quite grasp.

We are not merely atoms and appetites. We are image-bearers of something greater. Something that smiles when we smile, that weeps when we weep. Something, someone, who planted the seeds of firgun in our hearts as evidence that love, not indifference, has the final word.

1 John 4:8 tells us who God is:

“God is love.”

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The Watchmen at the Gates of Dawn

They are shaped like almonds. Not nutritious as, but invaluable for cognition and functionality. I say “they” because we have two. Divided by a great wall, and yet, they share my thoughts.

Deep within the human brain lay the amygdalae. Though humble in size, they carry the weight of our life’s memories as they scan the horizon for anything that can potentially cause harm. They are the emotional watchman at the gate of our consciousness, standing guard in the shadows, alert to threat.

But like any faithful guards, it can be shaped by trauma.

In my own life, the amygdalae have become attuned—some might say over-attuned—to danger. A trauma in childhood trained it to keep the gates sealed tight, to be suspicious of certain tones, glances, and energies. Malice, aggression, hate—these now trigger deep internal signals: retreat, protect, withdraw. And I have listened. Not because I lack courage, but because I have learned, over time, the cost of leaving the gate unguarded to such humans.

The amygdales don’t use language. They speak through bodily sensations—a racing heart, a tight chest, the urge to flee. It remembers what the rational brain forgets. Even when the mind tells us, “You’re safe now,” the watchman may still see the shadows of the past cast over the present.

This is the paradox of being human: that our greatest protectors can also become our prison guards. That what once saved us might now isolate us.

And yet, the brain is not fixed. The amygdalae, like any seasoned gatekeepers, can be retrained. It listens—slowly, cautiously—to love, to safety, to consistency. It can learn to soften its alarms. Through prayer, silence, and the gentle presence of those who mean us no harm, the watchman may one day look out from the gate and find the landscape changed. Not a battlefield, but a garden.

I no longer fault my amygdalae for their vigilance. They have earned their scars. It remembers what I cannot bear to revisit. But I invite it to look again, to watch not only for danger—but for goodness too.

Because being human is not just about surviving the night. It's about learning, eventually, to trust the dawn.

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say to the LORD, “You are my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust.”

Psalm 91:1-2 BSB

Inspired by Matthew from The Chosen

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Seen and Loved: A Reflection on Being Different

Inspired by Matthew from The Chosen

My wife and I have been watching The Chosen. Like any portrayal of the life of Jesus, it has its critics—what’s new? But in the quiet moments, in the glances exchanged and the words not said, it offers something beautiful. For me, it’s the character of Matthew who stands out.

Not because he’s portrayed as neurodivergent, although that may be part of it. But because he knows what it’s like to be on the outside looking in. To be met with puzzled looks instead of warm smiles. To be judged not for what you've done, but for who you are—your tone of voice, your silence, your need for order, or your lack of small talk.

How many of us have lived that story?

Some of us carry what the world calls “quirks.” We may speak differently, think differently, organize our lives with a precision that others can’t understand. We may struggle in noisy crowds or with the unspoken rules of social interaction. And in a culture that prizes sameness and speed, it can feel like we’re standing still on the wrong side of the glass.

But what I see in Matthew’s story—and more importantly, in Jesus’ response to him—is something healing. Jesus doesn’t ask Matthew to “tone it down” or fit in. He simply says, Follow me.

He calls the whole person.

And that, to me, is the Gospel in miniature. That God doesn’t just tolerate difference—He chooses it. He sees the order in our minds, the care in our words, the depth behind our silences. He sees the pain of rejection, and the courage it takes to keep showing up. And he calls us anyway.

To those who feel different—neurodivergent, misunderstood, or simply “other”—you are not broken. You are not less than. You are seen, loved, and invited. Just like Matthew.

The world may pass by, misunderstanding what it sees. But Jesus stops. And when he calls your name, he calls all of you—every carefully arranged thought, every stammered word, every quiet strength.

***

But the LORD said to Samuel,

 “Do not consider his appearance or height, for I have rejected him; the LORD does not see as man does. For man sees the outward appearance, but the LORD sees the heart.” I Samuel 16:7

Jesus Calls Matthew the Tax Collector (The Chosen Scene)

"We do not need to explain these long walks to everyone...those who have walked understand: the trail changes you. And once it does, the walk never truly ends."

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It's Time For the Pilgrimage 

There is a mystery to long walks in the world’s grand places. Across continents and cultures, from the dusty paths of the Camino de Santiago to the granite trails of the West Highland Way, Klipspringer Hiking Trail the, Yosemite Grand Travers, the wind-carved coastlines of Norway or Italy and Austria's Alpine regions people set off, boots laced, and packs loaded, with a longing that’s difficult to articulate. It’s more than tourism. More than exercise. The terrain speaks to something deeper. Something ancient.

What drives us to take these long, solitary walks? Why are so many drawn to leave behind the comforts of modern life to trek through mountains, deserts, moorlands, and forests—sometimes for days or even weeks at a time?

The Call of the Wild Places

The natural world has always been the setting for spiritual encounters. Moses met God on a mountain. Jesus fasted in a wilderness. The early Celtic saints sought the thin places—those wild spaces where the veil between heaven and earth seemed worn, transparent. There’s something about vastness and silence that awakens the soul.

When we step into these grand landscapes, we enter a different rhythm. The chatter of daily life falls away, replaced by the whisper of wind through grass, the cry of a bird overhead, the distant rush of water. Walking becomes a kind of prayer—each step a word, each mile a verse in a slow, unfolding psalm.

In such places, God seems nearer, not because He is more present there, but because we are. Our minds settle. Our eyes open. We begin to see not just creation, but the Creator’s imprint on every rock and tree and changing sky.

Stripping Away What Doesn't Matter

Long-distance walking has a humbling effect. It pares life down to essentials: water, rest, food, warmth. We learn the cost of carrying too much, both literally and figuratively. There is a discipline in choosing what to leave behind. In this simplicity, we begin to notice how cluttered our lives have become—how many of our worries are unnecessary, how much noise we live with.

In the walking, we begin to shed more than weight. We shed the versions of ourselves we’ve been holding tightly to: the competent professional, the overachiever, the person always in control. On the trail, we become something more elemental. Human, vulnerable, dependent.

The journey becomes a mirror. With no screens to distract, no tasks to complete, we’re left with ourselves. And it is in this solitude—sometimes uncomfortable, sometimes liberating—that many begin to face long-buried thoughts or griefs. Walking through wildness often becomes a form of healing, because the path doesn’t ask for eloquence or perfection—only honesty and movement.

On Meeting Strangers

Though many set out alone, the trail has a way of bringing people together. There’s something deeply human in meeting someone at a trail marker, sharing a flask of coffee, comparing blisters and stories. These encounters are rarely shallow. Perhaps it’s the shared vulnerability of the walk that opens people up. The miles invite reflection, and reflection seeks expression.

In these fleeting friendships—formed over shared hardship, under starry skies or in stormy weather—we’re reminded of a truth: that life, like the trail, is meant to be walked together, at least in part. There's no need for small talk when both people are tired, sore, and staring into the same majestic landscape. Conversation moves quickly to things that matter.

Finding the Self You Lost

The great paradox of pilgrimage is that it often begins with a desire to escape but ends in rediscovery. We go to get away from the demands and routines of life, but in doing so we encounter a version of ourselves we had forgotten.

Out in the open, stripped of pretence, we meet the child who once loved stars, the soul who still dreams, the person who prays not in words but in wonder. Somewhere between the first mile and the final descent, we recover what the noise and pace of life had eroded: a sense of direction, of calling, of hope.

The road does not give answers easily. But it shapes us. It teaches patience. It demands perseverance. It opens the door to awe. And awe, I believe, is the beginning of wisdom.

The Ongoing Journey

There’s a reason why, after the walk is done, so many return home changed. Not always in ways visible to others—but changed, nonetheless. They carry in their memory the scent of pine, the shimmer of dawn mist, the silence of ridgelines, the sound of their own heartbeat in remote places. They carry a renewed sense that life is not just a list of obligations, but a path.

The world’s grand places—its mountain paths and coastal ways, its desert trails and forest roads—call us not just to see beauty, but to remember what it means to be human. To walk with purpose. To endure with grace. To feel small and yet known.

We do not need to explain these long walks to everyone. Some things are better understood with the feet than with the tongue. But those who have walked understand: the trail changes you. And once it does, the walk never truly ends.

****

A memorable encounter on a quiet pathway never forgotten

They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us as He spoke with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” 

Luke 14 (BSB).

"The soul should always stand ajar..."

— Emily Dickinson 

One summer afternoon, my wife and I found ourselves wandering through the heart of Edinburgh. The city was alive—the Edinburgh International Festival in full swing—its streets a river of faces, music, and colour. As we strolled along The Royal Mile, weaving through the crowds, I glanced around at the endless tide of people and turned to my wife.

"It's strange," I said, "but we're connected, somehow, to everyone here."

I was thinking about the old idea of six degrees of separation—the notion that, at most, six social connections link any two people on Earth. It first caught public imagination back in 1929, when Hungarian writer Frigyes Karinthy penned a short story exploring the theory.

But our connection to strangers, I realised, isn't just about having some ancient Celt in our family tree, waving a claymore across the misty glens. It’s something closer, more immediate. The idea that through friends, colleagues, or even a neighbour's brother-in-law, we are just a few steps away from anyone on the planet.

And sometimes life offers moments that make you believe it.

2008: An Auspicious Coincidence

It was during the depths of the British recession. I had flown to Krakow, Poland—my first time there—with the heavy purpose of visiting Auschwitz. One evening, sitting in a bustling square, I shared a meal with some friends, the laughter and chatter of other diners surrounding us like a low tide.

Across the way, I noticed a young man—maybe 22—stealing glances at me. He watched, hesitated, and finally stood up, slipping on his jacket. As he made to leave, he veered toward me, almost awkwardly.

"Excuse me," he said. "Did you give a lecture in the Scotland about young people in crisis?"

I blinked, surprised. "Yes," I said. "How on earth do you know that?"

He smiled and explained: he had a copy of the lecture on CD, passed to him by a friend of a friend.

"It was your voice," he said. "I recognised your voice."

Six degrees of separation? Sometimes, it feels like only one.

In 2011, Facebook researchers analysed the entire network of Facebook users — over 700 million people at the time — and found that the average separation between any two users was only 4.74 degrees. That’s even closer than the original theory suggested! It was living proof, using modern data, that the world really is incredibly connected.

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The more afraid someone is of being vulnerable, 

the more likely they are to crave power to protect themselves.

As a Christian, I find my mind increasingly troubled, caught between a faith rooted in Christ’s simplicity and a world of religious institutions that elevate men to positions that seem perilously close to divine authority. What was meant to offer sanctuary often unsettles my soul instead. These systems, while proclaiming themselves divinely inspired, assert possession of “the truth,” yet over time they reveal a disquieting instability: doctrines shift, policies mutate, the certainties they once insisted upon are revised or abandoned altogether. For a faith founded on eternal constancy, such wavering is a source of deep spiritual anguish.

The voice of Jesus, however, cuts through the noise with unwavering clarity. I hear His words like a balm: Ephesians 2:18 — “For through him we both have our access in one Spirit to the Father.” Access not mediated by man, not rationed out by councils or congregations, but granted directly through the Son. No hierarchy. No gatekeepers. Just the open arms of the Father.

And yet, this pure truth collides painfully with the systems that call themselves "Christian." How can one be "God-inspired" when the truths declared today contradict the convictions of yesterday? The inconsistency rattles my conscience. It feels not like the sure hand of God but like the restless reshaping of human hands hands that are ever building, ever altering, ever grasping.

I struggle especially with the triangular power structures so often found: a narrow summit crowded by men who demand obedience, beneath which the faithful are organized in descending ranks. It is a vision of authority that seems so far removed from the Servant-King who knelt to wash feet. These leaders, in claiming a special insight into the will of God, all too often position themselves between the believer and the Father, a role Christ alone was meant to fill. Instead of nurturing a personal relationship with God, such systems seem designed to tether believers to the institution itself, binding them with obligations of loyalty and conformity.

Nowhere is the fracture more visible than in the practices of disfellowshipping, excommunication, and shunning. I have seen the devastation first-hand: families torn, lifelong friendships shattered, hearts broken, not because of rebellion against Christ, but because of a refusal to conform to human interpretations. To see love wither under the weight of institutional control wounds me more deeply than words can say.

I cannot help but think of the Pharisees whom Jesus rebuked — men who, under the guise of devotion, twisted God’s law into heavy burdens. Jesus did not condemn their desire for righteousness but their blindness to love. And now, I see the same spirit alive: a fierce preservation of order at the expense of mercy, a clinging to image over compassion.

Even worse, some of these institutions, in their desperation to protect themselves, have hidden grievous wrongs. Stories of abuse, concealment, and silence abound, revealing a chilling truth: when survival of the organization becomes the highest aim, Christ’s call to love the least of these is drowned out.

Despite this, my heart remains tender. I do not look down on those who remain within these structures. I understand the longing for belonging, for certainty, for a place to anchor one’s soul. Many within are sincere, seeking God with all they have. I love them — they are my brothers and sisters, fellow wanderers in search of home.

But I cannot quiet the deep, persistent voice within me — a voice that whispers of another way. A way free from the heavy scaffolding of human authority. A way rooted in Christ alone. A way where love is not subject to committees, and access to the Father is not doled out as a reward for obedience.

In the end, all the shifting doctrines, all the changing policies, all the clamour of human systems fall away before the simple, unchanging truth:
Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.
No institution, no council, no leader can stand in His place. Through Him alone, I have access to the Father.
And through that access, I find peace.

Joy was a “desire that is itself more desirable than any satisfaction.”

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you.”

— Augustine, Confessions

There is an ache that follows us, quietly persistent. We feel it in the stillness after the music fades, in the let down that follows even our happiest moments, in the silence after a longed-for dream has been realised, and still, something is missing. Some try to fill it with materialism, the new car, the new house, sex, travel and other forms of temporary pleasures that create that dopamine lift that quickly fades.

Augustine named this ache centuries ago. It is the restlessness of the soul made for another world.

Augustine’s confession is not just personal it's universal. Every human life is lived in pursuit of something that seems always just out of reach. The ancient philosopher Blaise Pascal described it as a “God-shaped vacuum” in the heart of every man, something no created thing can fill. We attempt to plug it with distractions, with ambition, with relationships, with causes, but none last. They flicker, and the ache returns.

C.S. Lewis, perhaps our greatest modern apologist of longing, called this ache Joy, but not joy in the way we commonly speak of it. For Lewis, Joy was a “desire that is itself more desirable than any satisfaction.” It came unbidden, in glimpses—a shaft of sunlight in the woods, a half-remembered song, the smell of autumn leaves—and vanished before it could be captured. It was not the thing itself, but the signpost toward it. Lewis came to believe that Joy was evidence not of delusion, but of design. “If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy,” he wrote, “the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world.”

Augustine, Pascal, and Lewis all agree on something essential: we are creatures with eternity planted in our hearts. We bear the imprint of a home we have never fully seen but somehow remember. We are like exiles, living with a homesickness that nothing here can cure. And this is not weakness—it is revelation.

The modern world tells us to silence this restlessness. It offers distractions, consumerism, achievement, digital escapism. But Christianity dares to say: no, listen to it. That ache is not the problem; it is the pointer. Like hunger points to food, and thirst to water, so longing points to God.

Pascal wrote that the infinite abyss within us “can only be filled by an infinite and immutable object; in other words, by God himself.” Not ideas about God. Not religion for its own sake. But God, personal, relational, knowable.

This is the essence of apologetics not as argument, but as invitation. We do not only offer evidence for God's existence; we invite weary souls to come home. The restless heart, the sudden Joy, the persistent yearning—these are whispers of the divine calling us to return. As Augustine put it, “Late have I loved you, beauty so old and so new.”

To speak of God, then, is to speak not just of theology, but of homecoming—of the One in whom every longing finds its end, and every wandering heart, its rest.

"God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us.." — Acts 17:27 (BSB).