A person may know the answer to that question. And yet, when your world is crashing around you, and you’re one, huge tangled ball of emotions, excellent theology isn’t always the greatest comfort. It’s a pretty common response, based on a common assumption. As psychologist counselor and educator Dr. Larry Crabb writes in his book Shattered Dreams:

In our shallow, sensual way of looking at life, we tend to measure God’s Presence by the kind of emotion we feel. Happy feelings that make us want to sing, we assume, are evidence that God’s Spirit is present. We think a sense of loss or confusion or struggle indicates His absence.

Dr. Larry Crabb has written: “When God seems most absent from us, He is doing His most important work in us. He vanishes from our sight to do what He could not do if we could see Him clearly.”

Remember when Jesus Christ hung on the cross, and cried out to His heavenly Father in confusion and despair, “My God! My God! Where are you?” God was silent. But it was at that exact moment that God the Father was closing the transaction that was the number one reason the Son had come to earth – reckoning His death as payment for our sins. And this is what brought Jesus the greatest joy of His eternal existence!