The God Who Hides Himself

For twenty years my brother and his wife were missionaries in Papua New Guinea where he founded Papua New Guinea Bible Institute at Pabrabuk Station. One evening he called saying he had received exciting news in a phone call the previous night.

A missionary and a national were flying over the most remote part of Papua New Guinea and decided to touch down because it was so isolated. Sure enough, the people there had never seen a plane or white people before and everyone ran away when they landed-everyone except one man.

He walked up to them and said, "Where are you from?"

"Kaupena," they replied.

"I know that place. I went to school at Pabrabuk. My name is Richard. I've been preaching the Gospel here and have 3,000 converts."

The special part of this story to me is that my brother's vision for founding the school had been to send out revivalists to the remote areas of Papua New Guinea. He had left the country without seeing the results he had anticipated.

Does God fail? No, but He does hide himself. Sometimes His answers are not visible or they are not what we thought He would provide. Someday, though, we'll see that He answered our prayers with much greater wisdom than we could have imagined.

I praise You, God, because my prayers are being heard and answered in ways I am not anticipating.

"Truly you are a God who hides himself" (Isaiah 45:15).