Where Has Your Beloved Gone?
June 30, 2021·Jon Berglund
“Where has your beloved gone, most beautiful of women? Which way did your beloved turn, that we may look for him with you?”
— Song of Songs 6:1
Sometimes we think that because God is everywhere, we don’t need to seek Him. And for sure, the message of the Bible is that He came to us — not the other way around. But, like any romance or dance, His movement is meant to lead our own.
Any person who has sought a relationship knows that romance ebbs and flows. It pulses like a dance — sometimes we move together, sometimes we push and pull. In dating, every delay increases urgency, every moment apart deepens desire. There are all sorts of moments where we see each other and then miss each other. One moment, we’re on the same page; the next, we’re on different planets.
Now, if this is true of human relationships, it’s also true of our relationship with God.1 If we seek Him, we will find Him (Jeremiah 29:13), but we must first seek Him. When we miss God, what the Christian mystics called la noche oscura del alma (or “the dark night of the soul”), we can distract ourselves with busyness, or we can lean into the absence. Like the ten bridesmaids of whom Jesus spoke (Matthew 25:1-13), we can tend to the things He desires, while we’re on the lookout for Him. The thing we must remember is that, if He is withdrawn, it’s because He wants us to look for Him.
God hasn’t abandoned you; He only wants you to seek Him.
“O soul, are you weary and troubled?
No light in the darkness you see?
There’s light for a look at the Savior,
And life more abundant and free.
Turn your eyes upon Jesus,
Look full in His wonderful face,
And the things of earth will grow strangely dim,
In the light of His glory and grace.” 2
Pastor Jon Berglund
