Several years ago, a high school senior sent me a note after I had given a chapel talk at her school. She wrote, “What do you do when you can’t find God? You pray, and it feels like you are talking to an empty chair; and you read your Bible, but it’s just words, and it does not mean anything to you.” C.S. Lewis wrote that when he prayed during his wife’s illness, the doors to heaven seemed to have been double-bolted.

Some of us have had that experience of feeling that God is far away and unreachable. Even some of the psalmists wrote about times when God did not seem to be anywhere near. In Psalm 22, David cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus himself repeated those words as he hung dying on the cross (Mark 15:34).

So what do you do when you can’t find God? Do what the psalmist did, and cry out to God. Let him know how much you need him. And read and reread today’s Bible passage, which assures us that when we seek God with all our hearts, we will find him. God wants to be a part of our everyday lives, just as he showed us when his Son, our Savior was born.