From ages past no one has heard,
    no ear has perceived,
no eye has seen any God besides you,
    who works for those who wait for him.
You meet those who gladly do right,
    those who remember you in your ways.
But you were angry, and we sinned;
    because you hid yourself we transgressed.
We have all become like one who is unclean,
    and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth.
We all fade like a leaf,
    and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.

In just three verses we see the prophet in a conversation with God.

In the first two sentences (From ages past…remember you in your ways), he speaks praise of God, recalling that no one, for many ages, has seen another God at work–certainly not another God who works on behalf of those who serve him.

This can be taken in a couple of different ways. For those of us who believe there is only one God (a belief shared by Christians, Jews and Muslims), it’s a reminder that any awareness of divine action has to be the action of the one God. Other people may attribute it to other gods, but that is their failure in calling God’s action the work of some other being.

For readers who believe there are other gods, it is a reminder that there is no god like our God. He is above all others–God of gods, Lord of lords.

The prophet also reminds god that there are those who do right.

The next sentence, (But you were angry….we transgressed) sounds less like praise and more like the prophet is arguing with God, justifying human sin as a result of God’s absense.

This hits on an important theme of Advent, and of the challenge of believing in the return of Christ.

We, like the prophet, often perceive that God has hidden himself from us. Like the child who is angry when the parent leaves, we can blame our misbehavior on God’s absence. We can claim that it’s God’s fault that we transgressed because God hid himself in anger.

The sense that God has hidden himself from us is pretty much universal; we all believe it at one time or another. One of the reasons we have trouble looking forward to God’s return is we don’t want to admit we believe he left. Whether he is really hiding himself from us, or that is merely our perception, doesn’t really matter. The feeling of abandonment is real.

The consequence of that feeling comes in the last two sentences, “We have become like one who is unclean.” In other words, we have become like someone who is outside of God’s people.

Whatever the cause, that is another place we have all found ourselves in at one time or another.

This is, by any measure, a dark passage of scripture. The positive message comes in understanding that our feelings of separation from God are not unique to us, and they are not fatal to our relationship with God. They will pass, and God wants to restore our relationship. But even while we wait for that to happen, we keep faith that God is still with us.