If our shallow, self-critical culture sometimes seems to lack a sense of the numinous or spiritual it's only in the same way a fish lacks a sense of the ocean.

Humor aside, I think the reason we sometimes have the false sense that God is so far away is because that is where we have put him. We have kept him at a distance, and then when we are in need and call on him in prayer, we wonder where he is. He is exactly where we left him.

Sometimes it rained a little. Sometimes they went thirsty. They knew that God was far away. Perhaps he was in the mountains, the place of the priests and the tabernacle. (p 133)

My friend, you thought you lost Him;
that all your life you've been separated from Him.
Filled with wonder, you've always looked outside for Him,
and haven't searched within your own house.

As I’ve said before, no wonder we think God has abandoned us; we’ve abandoned ourselves.

Now, if the gulls and the fish do not philosophize, they have no consciousness of life being good as a whole or bad as a whole. So when we philosophize and pity the poor fish, that really turns out to be just our own problem.

It's strange that those we miss the most
Are those we take for granted.

God seems to have disappeared from the horizon, and his word no longer seems a compass guiding our lives, our basic decisions, our human and social relationships.

"Help us to find God." "No one can help you there." "Why not?" "For the same reason that no one can help the fish to find the ocean."

If now we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten how to see God in one another.

Oh dear God, one misses the land when is far away.

'Where is your God?'
That's what my friends ask me,
And I say it's taken him so long
'Cause we've got so far to come.

Whatever our situation, we feel some sense of confusion, anxiety, and helplessness. At the same time, we think about God and wonder where He is.

God is absence. God is the solitude of man.