excerpts from Prayer: finding the heart's true home by Richard Foster

chapter 2: prayer of the forsaken, talks about the times in our lives when we cant sense God's presence...

"can u see how our very sense of the absence of God is, therefore, an unsuspected grace? in the very act of hiddenness God is slowly weaning us of fashioning him in our own image. like aslan, the christ figure in the chronicles of narnia, God is wild and free and comes at will. by refusing to be a puppet on our string or a genie in our bottle, God frees us from our false, idolatrous images."

"Through all of this, paradoxically, God is purifying our faith by threatening to destroy it. we are led to a profound and holy distrust of all superficial drives and human strivings. we know more deply than ever before our capacity for infinite self-deception. slowly we are being taken off our vain securities and false allegiances. our trust in all exterior and interior results is being shatters so we can learn faith in God alone. through our barrennes of soul God is producing detachment, humility, patience, perserverance."

here am i, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word - Mary (Luke 1:38