The First Family, the First Worship, the First Acceptance, the First Rejection

The First Family, the First worship, the First Acceptance, the First Rejection
Genesis 4: 1-5a

I once went through quite a long period of time (several years, I think) when God did not seem very real. I didn’t exactly doubt whether God was there; it was just that I didn’t feel God was there. Much of the time I didn’t mind that very much; it was just one of those things, and maybe I reckoned it would not last forever (and it didn’t). I found it hardest to handle this feeling during worship, in particular our main weekly seminary chapel service. There, it seemed that other people were having great religious experiences. They knew God was there, all right. I felt—nothing. It would be overly dramatic to call this period of time my “dark night of the soul,” the phrase used by the Spanish spiritual writer St. John of the Cross. But it had something of the dynamics of that experience, not least in the way it tests you and uncovers whether you are relating to God only for the sake of what you get out of it...