The Hidden Face of God: Finding the Missing Door to the Father Through Lament

1 | Awakening the God

Who Never Sleeps

Awaken, oh my God.

PSALM 7:6

The first, faltering steps in the direction of thinking biblically about God invariably lead us to stumble over paradox. The Bible seems to be saying two mutually exclusive things at the same time: for example, that Jesus is fully man and at the same time fully God. Some people make light of this clash of contraries. Don’t worry about understanding it, they say. You just need more faith. Others insist that God is reasonable, and so they conclude that the biblical God must be rejected for their more reasonable god. The first group doesn’t take the problem of paradox seriously enough. The second group doesn’t take God seriously enough. Both groups are wrong and both groups are right. (Ha! A paradox!)

Yes, we do need more faith to survive the scandal of the paradoxical God. But this dilemma is no small thing to simply be gotten over. More faith won’t fix the problem. The second group is also right: it is a wall that is impossible to scale. But the same God who commands centenarians to make babies consistently calls upon us to do the impossible as well (Genesis 17:17).

The Father knows our struggle with paradox. He revealed this awareness once in a pronouncement to Isaiah that began with God paradoxically urging the people to come and buy wine and milk, though they have no money. Later he whispered to Isaiah: My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways (55:8).

The Father does not think like us, and so neither does He do things the way we would do them. If we could think infinite thoughts, we would not be people. If He did things the decidedly imperfect way we do, He would not be God.

Imagine we were at the Superdome and I asked you to go outside and put your arms around the building. Supposing you were loony enough to try, you would stretch one arm in one direction and reach as far as you could with the other arm the opposite way. If your arms were long enough, they would meet on the opposite side. You would have grasped the Superdome.

The same is true whenever we try to comprehend God. We stretch our minds in one direction and say Jesus is fully man. Then we reach out with our imaginations in the other direction and say He is God. If our minds were big enough, they would meet on the other side of the truth. As it is, however, we are left making two seemingly contradictory statements, often appearing no less loony than the person trying to hug the Superdome.

One such paradox that makes its way into many biblical laments involves the sleeping God. In Psalm 121:4, the unnamed musician says that, he who watches over Israel will neither slumber nor sleep. It is supposed to be a lyric of comfort. It is good to know, after all, that the One who is watching over you is not ever going to fall asleep on the job (compare Psalm 4:8).

But what are we to make of those paradoxical moments when this God who never slumbers appears to be asleep, when we are crying out for the help only He can provide and the only response seems to be a kind of holy snoring from the other side of heaven? When we are caught in the midst of a storm, how are we supposed to awaken someone who never sleeps? (Job 19:7; 30:20). How do we call out so the Lord will rise up, as though waking from sleep? (Psalm 44:23).

Early in the ministry of Jesus, He and His disciples were caught in the middle of a huge, demonic storm on the Sea of Galilee. The Gospels describe it as a seismos, an enormous shaking. Though commentaries frequently explain the storm in terms of the normal meteorological patterns in and around Galilee, the truth is the disciples had never seen a storm like this before. All together in one small boat, it was Satan’s chance to wipe them all out in one blow.

But Jesus, the Son of God, was asleep in the midst of the tempest. If it had been one of their customarily calm crossings of the lake, the Twelve might have been able to understand. But the boat is about to sink! How, they say to themselves, could he possibly be asleep in the midst of a storm like this? Doesn’t he care about us?

Mark, who tells the story from Peter’s perspective, says the disciples castigated Jesus. Don’t you care if we drown? they scream above the storm.

Jesus lifts His head from the little, rough pillow that was normally used by the man who steered the boat, wipes the sleep from His eyes, and rebukes the storm. Be muzzled! He says. They are the same words He speaks when He casts out demons. With two words the attack disappears completely. Turning to the Twelve, perhaps with a yawn lingering on His lips, He says, Where is your faith?

Trapped in the middle of a storm on a boat that is sinking. All the while, the One who could calm the storm with a word, sleeps blissfully unaware. Sound familiar? Is this your life? It frequently is mine.

Just when He calls us into relationship, just when we get into His boat, as it were, the storm descends on us. We are called to follow the Way, and yet we seem always to get lost, to lose Him.

This is not the time to try harder. This is not the moment to strain to manufacture more faith. It is the occasion to cry louder to the One, who though He may seem asleep, is most significantly still present with us in the boat. He is there to be awakened by our cries. He is moved to act by our tears. If you think about it, this is the very first lesson we learned as infants — a persistent cry will bring help.

The story of the storm on the sea is more than a parable. It is more than a lived-out example of being saved, not from but through the tempest that would destroy our lives. It is all that and much more. It is a story that prophetically appears in the Psalms as well. Besides the detailed description of the death of Jesus, it is the only other story in the Gospels that makes such a prophetic appearance in the Psalter.

In Psalm 107, a song that celebrates the hesed (loving-kindness) of the God who makes provision for those in the wilderness, for those in tears, for those in misery and chains — the God who humbles those who rebel against Him — we find an account of the same storm we read about in the Gospels.

In verse 23, those who went out on the sea in ships, who make their living as fishermen, are promised that they will see His wonders. What follows is an emotional pretelling of what the Gospels only provide as a newspaper account. In verse 28 they cry out to the One who can save them, and the seas are hushed.

This simple, trusting cry comes from the lips of those of us who are learning that our last hope has always been our only hope — this cry that awakens the God who never sleeps.

For Discussion

1. What other parallels can we draw from the incident of Jesus asleep in the boat? How does His question, Don’t you have any faith? apply to us when we cry out for God to wake