NOTES for Jer 23:23

The question in essence: Can it be true that because we feel ourselves far from God, He becomes less God? Smaller becomes His goodness, smaller His love, smaller His omnipotence? What a stupid thing.

Probably, it goes from our "material" experience, which says that the influence of something on us weakens as we go afar off. So the farness of God turns out even advantageous: we can count less with Him. We understand that He has reasons not to be satisfied with us, but If He is far, then it is not so terrible and we can hurry not too much to change. We already begin purposefully to push Him away from us, to put barriers between us and God - only not to fall into the hands of the Living God. All this is of course self-deceit. God is always and everywhere the Same, He is always next to us, even when we think that He is far off. And the problem is not that in fear we hide from Him or avoids Him, but that in confidence to find Him, to turn to Him, to approach Him.