*Mark 15.33-34 (CEV)

One would think that I would have enjoyed a wonderful sense of Presence, of Love. After all, the day was Easter Day.

I had planned and led five Worship Services in four days, one being a Memorial Service. The Services went wonderfully, as I spent myself serving others.

Easter Sunday came. Up at 4AM - I a night person, not morning person. But the 6.30AM Worship and fellowship afterward were wonderful, and the regular 10AM Service was deeply moving.

Then, after, I declined a third go out to fellowship and eat. I felt disappointed to say no to three kind invitations, but I, after giving to serve others during Holy Week, wanted time to be alone with God. I wanted Rest, Reflection - to sit on the bench beside the river and sense Divine Presence and pray about my Life in His Heart.

Well, after eating at home alone, finishing a movie, playing with my dogs, and sleeping well for about two hours, I set out on that longed for Spiritual Respite beside the river.

What did I experience beside that river? The joy and bliss of the felt-presence of Grace? No. I felt miserable. I stayed a short while, and left sad and feeling lost. Everything I felt inside was opposite what I wanted to sense in my Easter Refuge. I felt it odd, for I had given so much to lead others into the joy of Easter, the Presence of Our Lord. I reflected that often we who are spiritual leaders spend our energies in Serving, and we are left empty, while others go on rejoicing in what they received and feel.

The next morning I awakened and made myself get up. I prepared coffee, and, oddly, after I began devotional time, there was a rising of a wonderful, strong, and comforting sense of Presence.

Especially noticeable, was the day before, in the afternoon, I was troubled by a sense of separation from someone I had longed to be a dear, spiritual friend with. I had offered my time and presence, but had gotten no responses of acknowledgement.

Also, I felt deserted by the denomination that had said only weeks earlier, "You do not fit us, though we affirm your gifts and calling," after about 10 years of serving in it, and had told me I would no longer serve after July 1 in it or with the church I serve now - to the astonishment of both the people and me. This, then, would be my last Easter with this wonderful people.

So, here, on a day of celebration of Resurrection were many feelings that seemed contrary to Easter. And the sense of absence of Christ was discomfiting.

But this raises the question: What about such aridity? What do we do on an Easter - or anytime - when we are overwhelmed with hurt and haunting separation from God and others, and can seem to do nothing to connect with a Sense of Divine Love? In our head we my affirm God never leaves us alone, but in our human faculties we may feel a saddening absence of God, and this may register as abandonment - being orphaned by Love.

What do we do, then, in such spiritual aridity? We are to do more than grit our teeth and bear it, so to speak. We are to affirm what we do not feel.

God had not abandoned me Easter afternoon. Surely, some matters lying heavily on my heart might have blocked a Sense of His Presence, as well as the fatigue from expending much during the week. But God had not left me alone. I felt alone.

This Easter Season we can acknowledge that sometimes our human faculties seem bereft of all things Divine. If we have known the sweetness of Christ in those faculties, this loss of the Sense of God can be painful.

This is a reason faith cannot be based primarily on the human capacities to sense Love. Faith must be reasonable: that is, rooted in an inner, mystical awareness that we are in Love, and still in Love when we feel unloved, left alone, abandoned by God and by others.

We enter into the loneliness. We speak Grace into the aridity. We continue our direction of heart and mind to our Beloved, the Resurrected Christ Jesus.

Indeed, there are those who are bound to take a painful fall, for they have come to equate the Presence of Christ with heightened emotions. For them, worship and devotion must consist of enthusiastic and sweet feelings. Love calls us to a higher order Grace - a reasonable conviction of the Divine being near, still gracing us even when our human faculties are empty of divine sweetness, and we feel like crying out with the Christ: "My God, My God, why have you left me!"

So, when I write, as yesterday, on intimacy with God, I do not mean a mere human feeling within the human faculties. Yes, this will often be true: Divine Love can arise to sweeten the whole self, even the body, with emotion.

I speak of an intimacy that Is - is Intimacy. This Love is an Undercurrent free of both loving and unloving sensations, for such Love is of a Higher Order than the order of all we would call love arising solely within the human capacities.

Therefore, note, Jesus prayed "My God, My God...." He prays of being left alone, while his prayer itself is affirming a relationship still present in the sensation of being orphaned by the very One who seems so distant from Him.

And the consummation of this comes, in more tender, personal terms later, as "God" is addressed in familial words: Jesus shouted, "'Father, I put myself in your hands!' Then he died" (23.46, CEV).

When you're in the presence of Divine Solace, it's no big deal to turn your back on human solace. But it's a big deal to have no solace whatsoever, either human or divine. A bigger deal still is willingly to sustain exile of the heart for the honor of God. Biggest deal of all is not to seek yourself in any one thing and not to look for any one merit in return.