God allows us to perish as if He had forgotten His...

God allows us to perish as if He had forgotten His promise

Who wrote that? Martin Luther. In his Genesis commentary.
Reading Luther's commentaries on Genesis is an amazing, fearful treat. Luther is brutal, honest and radically centered on the Gospel, radically focused on what it means, what it feels like, to live by faith.
Living by faith is no platitude for him. Some of the passages are breathtaking in their ferocity and Gospel centered-ness. Luther hones in on what it means to live by faith, that is, with no assurance for God or for his goodness, save a promise.
In this passage Luther writes of :
God pretending to exercise no care for us
God creeping into a corner
hiding behind a curtain
seeming to not know us at all
He allows us to perish as if He had forgotten his promise
He regards us as being rejected
Christians must "endure" the plans of God
Luther notes how we often feel as if:
God not only sleeps He snores
that it seems as if there is no God at all to care for us
Luther goes on :
God allows us to be tried to led down to hell, to be mortified
He sends no angel but opens the window for Satan to rage
Luther's answer to such a God who allows and perpetrates such things is alarmingly simple. There is no theologizing to get around it, no hop, skip and jumping around the Scriptures to try to build an apologia for God. He doesn't try to construct a system where it makes rational sense.
His answer is: the promises of God, the promises and sacramental proclamations. To all the evil and all the suffering, all the doubt and all the silence of God we experience, Luther says, we must stand on the Word of God. This is no rationalistic, Biblicistic stand; it is a life or death, Satan tearing at my flesh full of despair desperation cry to God, "I have your promise."
In fact Luther does not shy away from attributing all the action, all the doing of the affliction, doubt and despair directly to God. God drives us there on purpose. He abandons us, on purpose. He opens the window for Satan. All to mortify us, to kill us, to leave with us with nothing, absolutely nothing, but the promise. "I am baptized," is the cry of one who has nothing else to grasp.
One of Luther's favorite examples of this is death itself where the saint finally is literally killed and can do nothing but trust for he has no other abilities left.
In the next post I will post this passage of Luther's Commentary to illustrate what I am writing about.

incarnatus est: God allows us to perish as if He had forgotten His...: "Who wrote that? Martin Luther. In his Genesis commentary. Reading Luther's commentaries on Genesis is an amazing, fearful treat. Luther is..."