The Gap

From the time the world was created, people have seen the earth and sky and all that God made. They can clearly see his invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature. So they have no excuse whatsoever for not knowing God. Romans 1:20

Annie Dillard, in the Pulitzer prize–winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, writes out of a heart revived after sequestering herself in nature for a year. Solitude was her companion, so she thought, but in the solitude her thoughts turned to God.

Many of us also miss God in the everyday, but when things are still, when we take time in the quietness of nature—or the quietness of our soul—our heart begins to tune into God’s thoughts. One can’t help but go there. In the quietness, the deeper questions of life arise: Why am I here? Who created all of this? What will happen when this earthly body no longer houses my soul? What is the purpose of life?

Many of us feel that God is silent. I think God isn’t silent; rather, he speaks volumes each day. But are we listening?

His presence is obvious if we are looking. Annie Dillard quotes the prophet Ezekiel, who chastises false prophets as those who have “not gone up into the gaps.” Those gaps, the times of solitude, lead us to a deeper fellowship and understanding of God.

Dillard says, “The gaps are the thing. The gaps are the spirit’s home, the altitude and latitudes so dazzlingly spare and clean that the spirit can discover itself for the first time like a once blind man unbound. . . . Stalk the gaps. Squeak into a gap. . . . This is how you spend this afternoon, and tomorrow morning, and tomorrow afternoon. Spend the afternoon. You can’t take it with you.”^a Dillard further reflects, “The secret of seeing is, then, the pearl of great price.”^b

When was the last time you went into the gap—into nature—and looked for the evidences of God’s fingerprints?