I spent most of my teen years living on a family ranch in northern British Columbia. We were literally at the end of the road, and our closest neighbors were eight kilometres away. Situated in the foothills of the Rockies, the ranch was surrounded by thousands of acres of Canadian wilderness. Among my favourite memories are the summer Saturdays, when we would saddle up our horses, stow a simple lunch in the saddle bags and ride into unexplored territory for another wilderness adventure. For me, the word “wilderness” revives pleasant memories.

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My mom and dad have taught me a profound lesson on what faithfulness looks like. They celebrated 65 years of marriage before my dad’s recent passing and those years covered some very hard seasons. When I was younger, I fully expected my parents to get divorced eventually. Part of that stemmed from seeing that they didn’t spend much time together and I could often hear them fighting when they thought my brother and I were sleeping. The other reason I expected it was because most of the kids in my class were from one-parent homes. I can only recall two of my classmates whose parents were still together besides mine. When my parents did fight, I often wondered if this would be the time where they would walk away from each other.

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Where are you, God? This is a question that haunts all of us at different times in our lives, pastors included. Psalm 10:1 says, “Why, O Lord, do you stand far off? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?” We have all had those times when God seems completely uninterested and uninvolved, when our prayer is dry, when our relationship with Him seems empty and one-sided. For the pastor, this reality can be especially worrisome. Read more