The story in which God does his saving work arises among a people whose primary experience of God is his absence. We are made to face this at the very outset of Exodus when we realize that these people have been in Egyptian slavery for over 430 years. The experienced absence or silence of God for the over 400 years preceding the Exodus is a frequently overlooked but important element of the salvation story. Where was God all that time? Did not those covenantal words God made with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have any continuing validity? The absence of God is part of the story. It is neither exceptional nor preventable nor a judgment on the way we are living our lives. Whether the experience of the absence is measured in weeks, months, or years, for most of us it doesn’t fit into what is “normal” in our understanding of salvation. But it is normal. Jesus hanging on the cross used this prayer –“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”– at the very moment that he was completing the work of salvation. On Jesus’ lips this prayer validates the experience of the absence of God as integral to our participation in salvation. Understanding this is necessary, to keep us alert and attentive to the mystery of God whose ‘ways are past finding out,' to prevent us from reducing God Almighty to “god-at-my-beck-and-call”... Eugene Peterson, Christ Plays in Ten Thousand Places.