The hound of heaven

I had really wanted to journal all my thoughts day by day that they might be a record of what's going on, but I've found them too fickle. If I were to journal every change in my mercurial mood I would do nothing but write.

The last months have been fairly good. I've come to some conclusions that around this fear of death is a true clinical depression that hampers my progress. Perhaps even that my crisis is more of chemistry than faith.

But, that leaves a single question unresolved to my satisfaction: Why would God not deliver me from it? In many things I can accept that God leaves us to the devices he allowed us to create, medicines and such. In matters of faith though I expect the Holy Spirit to step in and essentially say, "I've got this one."

I've picked back up my apologetic readings. Tonight I was reading Ravi Zacharias' book Jesus Among Other Gods. The first chapter is really about his story of how God pursued him.

Towards the end he reads from a poem by Francis Thompson titled The Hound of Heaven. In it Thompson outlines his desperate attempts to flee God and the measured persistence of God to pursue him. That made me think. While Thompson fled God I want to pursue intimacy with Him richly. Why then does Thompson feel the persistent presence and I feel the chilly absence.

I say absence somewhat in hyperbole. Sure, I do feel God but when I seek Him the most I feel He steps away. It's almost as though he will always stay a given distance. If I go two steps forward, He goes two back. If I go two back, He steps forward two.

This makes me question, does God love me. Rarely do I read of people feeling the way I do. That frightens me. Is that because I'm not like them, maybe that I've been forsaken in some way.

That's a feeling, my logic steps in and tells me something different. But then again if this were all logic I'd have been just fine months ago.