"Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone." Is from a
Joni Mitchell song from the '60s and it makes me think about what Jesus said.
"I will never leave you or forsake you" that is a biblical promise of divine presence and support, found in Hebrews 13:5 and Deuteronomy 31:6. It conveys that God's presence and help will never abandon believers, especially in difficult times, providing a foundation for confidence and courage against any fear. The promise is a powerful source of assurance for Christians, reflecting God's constant faithfulness and unchanging love for those who are committed to Him.
But we can leave Him. When we don’t recognize the value of relationship with Him until He’s gone. Not that He walks away; He promised He would never do that. God is “gone” from us the same way He was in Eli’s day before the ark was actually taken away.
In many ways, the loss of the ark of the covenant for Israel was just an outward sign of an inward spiritual loss that had occurred long ago. Israel had lost God when they stopped hearing His voice, when they ignored His commands and did “what was right in their own eyes”
25 In those days there was no king in Israel; every man did what was right in his own eyes.
Judges 21:25
You can read more in Judges about their attempt to pull God out of hiding and get Him to do their bidding was proof that they had been without God—the one, true, holy, awesome, loving, and terrifying God—long before that day.
For us, God is gone when we fail to see Him or seek Him. He is gone when we treat Him like a lucky charm, a thing to be stowed away in a dusty chest and pulled out only in a crisis. He is gone when we insist on letting someone else go to Him for us instead of going to Him ourselves.
In all those ways and more, He is gone not because He actually left but because we never really let Him be present in our lives. I wonder if He then finds a way to make His absence felt, like a lover who will be taken for granted no more, just to give us enough pause to recognize what we’ve lost.
After all, He loves it when we seek Him, search for Him. Seeking is what He sent His Son to earth to do for us while we were lost. And seeking is how He wants us to live, like a lover who can’t live without the Beloved. Seeking just might be God’s love language.
But when we begin to ignore or avoid Him, when we lose the recognition of Him as God—sovereign and loving—He is gone.
The Bible gives us the solution in the words of Jesus.
4. Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
5. “I am the vine, you
are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing. 6. If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw
them into the fire, and they are burned. 7. If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you desire, and it shall be done for you. 8. By this My Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples.
9. “As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. 10. f you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love.
11. “These things I have spoken to you, that My joy may remain in you, and
that your joy may be full.
