It’s been a while since I’ve put pen to paper, or fingers to keys, as it were. Sometimes life calls for quiet reflection and the wrestling that follows honest introspection. I’ve sat quietly a lot lately. Thought deeply. Wrestled even more.

And from the weeds and thistles of all that cavernous thinking, one question has surfaced again and again:

“Lord, where are You?”

For a long time now, I haven’t felt like He was near.

I’ve stretched my hands out in the dark, trying to find my way toward Him, only to be met by sharp corners, blunt objects, and cold silence. Nothing has seemed to be Him.

But does that mean He isn’t here?

For months, I’ve been thinking about Advent.

The word Advent comes from the Latin adventus, meaning “arrival” or “coming.” It’s something we talk about often during Christmas, but rarely outside that season. The Advent of the Messiah marks everything for our faith, and we cling tightly to the beauty of His coming as a child.

But what does Advent mean for us now?

Finding God in Ordinary Days

Do we expect His presence to arrive in the middle of an ordinary Thursday? Do we look for Him on a forgettable Tuesday? In the monotony of a dreaded Monday?

We trust Him with our eternity, but do we expect Him in our today?

I’ve thought often about those closest to Jesus in the days following His death. I cannot imagine the crushing disappointment they carried. How abandoned they must have felt. Some of them surely felt deceived. Every ounce of hope they had placed in Him appeared shattered when He declared, “It is finished.”

But they hadn’t just lost an idea. They had lost their friend. Their teacher. Their brother. Their son.

The grief, confusion, anger, and doubt they must have wrestled with during those days is more than I can fully comprehend.

Still, in smaller ways, I understand the feeling.

I know what it feels like to wonder whether God is truly present. I know the ache of questioning whether the hope I’ve held onto is somehow in vain. I know what it feels like to agonize over His silence and wonder why He doesn’t defend His own name in certain situations.

I know the lonely disappointment that creates confusion inside something I once thought I understood clearly.

And then there is Mary.

“But Mary stood outside the tomb, crying…”

John 20:11–18

Mary loved Jesus deeply. She believed He was dead, and that grief consumed her so completely that she could see nothing except loss. She thought the best she could hope for was the recovery of His body.

And all the while, Jesus was standing right beside her.

She wept beside a living Savior because she could not recognize Him through the lens of her expectations.

His absence was not the problem.

Her perception of His presence was.

When God Feels Silent But Is Still Near

I think many of us experience faith this way.

Not necessarily through rebellion or unbelief, but through grief, exhaustion, disappointment, confusion, and long stretches of silence. We pray. We search. We cry. We try to hold on. Yet despite all of it, God can feel impossibly far away.

Mary expected death, so resurrection seemed impossible.

And often, we do the same thing.

We expect God to appear only in certain ways. We look for dramatic answers and overlook quiet endurance. We long for obvious miracles while God slowly reshapes us through conviction and perseverance. We crave emotional highs while He faithfully sustains us through His Word.

We want immediate rescue, but sometimes His presence arrives through the person willing to sit beside us in suffering.

And sometimes His presence is simply this: we are still standing even though we feel as though we could fall apart at any moment.

John 20 reminds us that Jesus is often present long before we are emotionally able to recognize Him.

The turning point for Mary was not intellectual clarity. That would come later.

The turning point came when Jesus spoke her name.

“Mary.”

She recognized Him because He knew her.

That detail matters deeply to me.

In seasons of loneliness and confusion, we often turn inward. We begin believing things like, “If I were spiritually stronger, I would feel God more clearly.” But in John 20, the initiative never comes from the disciples. It comes entirely from Jesus.

Their strength had nothing to do with it.

In fact, the resurrection accounts are filled with followers of Christ who failed to recognize Him at first: Mary, the disciples, Thomas, the travelers on the road to Emmaus.

The pattern is comforting.

Jesus is patient with partial understanding.

Faith Through Grief, Doubt, and Waiting

Faith was never meant to be constant emotional certainty, even though many of us quietly expect that from ourselves. In John 20, no one is “winning” in the way we tend to define spiritual maturity.

Mary is weeping.

Thomas is doubting.

The disciples are hiding in fear.

And Jesus still comes to them.

As Christians, we sometimes assume faith means always feeling inspired, always sensing God clearly, or never struggling with uncertainty. But Scripture paints a far different picture.

Faith often coexists with fear, confusion, grief, and unanswered questions.

The goal is not flawless perception.

The goal is turning toward Him, even when clarity feels impossible.

Jesus’ words to Mary,“Do not cling to me” can sound harsh at first. Of course she wanted to hold onto Him. She thought He was dead, and now He stood alive before her.

But His words were not rejection.

They were an invitation.

Until this moment, Mary’s relationship with Jesus had depended entirely on His physical presence. Now He was leading her into something deeper, a relationship built on faith, trust, and the abiding presence of His Spirit.

I think much of spiritual maturity involves learning that God’s presence will not always feel the way it once did.

Sometimes prayer feels like words bouncing off the ceiling.

Sometimes worship feels dry and mechanical.

Sometimes certainty fades.

But perhaps the Christian life is not about learning to hold onto certainty as much as it is learning to recognize God again and again.

Mary recognized Jesus when she stopped assuming, started listening, and responded to His voice.

We may not stand beside Jesus in the physical way Mary did, but He still meets us.

He met me in John 20, a passage I have read hundreds of times and suddenly it came alive in a way I had never experienced before.

This was His quiet Advent in my current season.

The Ongoing Advent of Christ in Our Lives

Sometimes His presence arrives through small moments of clarity.

Sometimes through peace when clarity never comes.

Sometimes when we expect Him to remove our suffering, He instead gives us strength to endure it.

Sometimes His presence is marked simply by the fact that although we desperately want to run, our feet remain planted.

One of the deepest truths of John 20 is this:

Jesus is far nearer than we realize, even when we feel utterly alone.

So thank You, Jesus, that my perception does not determine Your presence.

Thank You that Your Advent in my life is ongoing.

Thank You that You hold not only my eternity, but every moment between now and then.

Thank You that You are Emmanuel, God with us, because the truth is, You have been here all along.