When God Feels Absent But I Can’t Let Go
A psalm for those who still pray even when the answers don’t come, and the waters don’t part
I have been sitting with Psalm 77, not because I understand it, but because I need it.
Asaph begins not with composure but with desperation:
“I cry aloud to God… and He will hear me.”
That line alone holds more weight than it seems. It’s not a confident proclamation. It’s a stubborn, maybe even trembling, hope. A prayer uttered in the dark.
He doesn’t receive comfort when he seeks it. He can’t sleep. He can’t speak. Even prayer feels impossible. His memory torments him. He recalls the songs of the night, the joy he once had in God’s presence. But now, those memories feel like salt in the wound. They raise questions that pierce:
Has God rejected me?
Will He ever be kind to me again?
Has His love run out?
Have His promises failed?
Has He forgotten how to be gracious?
I’ve asked these too, though not always aloud. Sometimes I wonder if I still believe what I once knew to be true. Sometimes I fear that I do. And that it’s still not enough to move God’s hand.
Asaph doesn’t get a direct answer to his questions. What he gets is a shift. A change in posture.
He turns from inward anguish to outward remembrance:
“I will remember the deeds of the Lord… your miracles of long ago.”
He doesn’t remember because it solves his pain. He remembers because it grounds him in a God who has moved before. A God who parted the sea. Who led His people through waters no one else knew were crossable.
“Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.”
That line haunts me in the best kind of way.
It doesn’t promise immediate rescue. It doesn’t deny the chaos.
It simply insists: even when the way is invisible, God makes a way.
Even when His footprints disappear, His presence does not.
And yet, what if He doesn’t intervene?
What if the waters don’t part this time?
Where does that leave me?
This is where the psalm falls quiet. It doesn’t give answers. But it does something more honest: it keeps me with God. Even in the questioning. Even in the ache.
“You led your people like a flock.”
He didn’t just part the sea. He stayed. He guided. He walked with them on the other side.
So maybe the psalm isn’t meant to fix my fear. Maybe it’s meant to accompany me in it.
To remind me that dissonance is part of faith.
That the silence of God does not always signal His absence.
That even when my prayers echo back unanswered, I am still heard.
Here’s the prayer I find myself whispering as I read this psalm:
Lord, I fear the answer. But I have no one else.
You are all I have.
Help me love You still, even when You say no.
Even when I can’t see the way through.
Help me remember that You make paths in places no one else sees.
And You lead even when I cannot trace Your steps.
Maybe that’s what it means to keep hoping. Not that I stop hurting, but that I keep turning, again and again, to the only One who can still lead me forward.
Even here.