Easter tells us that we are missed

Our best relationships hint at what we are really missing.

Nathan Betts

Nathan is a speaker and writer on topics related to faith, life and God. He lives near Seattle, Washington. His writing is featured frequently in The Seattle Times. nathanbetts.com

A persons stands, holding a net curtain aside to gaze out.

Max Harlynking on Unsplash.

I never thought that God could miss me, but recently I’ve begun to wonder if he does.

Is there a person in your life that you just love spending time with? Maybe this person is a family member, a friend, colleague, neighbor, or maybe your spouse. As time has gone on in your life you now realize how special that person is to you. You think of the ease, the peace, the low heartbeat, lightheartedness, and depth of feeling that you’ve experienced all in simply being with that person and spending time with them.

As you think of that person, can you remember a time when there was a longer-than-usual gap between your visits? Maybe weeks, months, years. What was it like when you met up or talked to this special friend of yours after the hiatus? What did it feel like?

I have someone like this. His name is Andrew. He is my cousin, but I’ve generally thought of him as the brother I never had. We grew up together separated by only one year in age. My childhood is filled with memories of playing with him in different sports, games, wrestling, arguing, disagreeing, pranking each other, late-night fast-food runs, (which I no longer recommend), and eventually working long shifts on low sleep together. We were in each other’s wedding parties. We have experienced a lot of life together.

As time has gone on, and I now live on the other side of the continent, we have not been able to see each other as often as we would like.

But recently, he had a special work trip close to the Pacific Northwest, so he made time for a short stay with us near Seattle. On one day, I took him out for street tacos near the ocean and we were able to get some unhurried time to catch up. Throughout his visit I just kept thinking how much I had missed spending time with Andrew. He and I both expressed as much.

If you have just one of those friendships in life, you have hit the ball out of the park. And if you have two or three of those friendships, you’ve hit a grand slam. These friendships are unique.

For me, one of the most striking and poignant questions throughout the Bible is when God asks Adam “Where are you?”

As a theologian by education, I often think of these relational traits when it comes to God. Fundamental to Christian belief is that we can, despite how infinitely different he is to us, relate to God. There is a great deal of mystery to this idea, to be sure, but I’ve wondered long and hard what this looks like. In the long history of Christian thought, scholars, pastors, and theologians have pointed to Jesus Christ to help make sense of this massive, otherworldly concept.

The Hebrew Scriptures reveal what God is like in creation, miracles, acts of grace, displays of power and many other aspects. But when we are searching to understand how God relates to us as human beings, it is Jesus Christ who gives us the primary lens through which we can understand that quality of relationship. The interactions he has with his friends, leaders, children, and teachers are especially revealing. The way he heals people, enjoys meals with others, gives time to the outsiders, and speaks to the uptight religious types is all very instructive in how God relates to us as human beings.

Over the last few years, I have become increasingly interested in the questions that Jesus asks people. Jesus’s questions reveal to us what he is like.

“Why do you call me good?”

“Who do you say that I am?”

“Whose image is on this coin?”

“Will you also leave me?”

“What do you want me to do for you?”

These and many more have caused me to explore further the questions that God asks people because maybe his questions, sometimes more than his statements, reveal what makes him different.

For me, one of the most striking and poignant questions throughout the Bible is when God asks Adam “Where are you?” Since childhood I’ve wondered what God was doing in asking that question. God was not asking a geographical question; it’s not as though his internal GPS was confused in the garden of Eden. But if not a geography question, was God then playing an intellectual game with Adam and Eve? Perhaps, but that is increasingly doubtful, given the enormous stakes in that narrative (brokenness had just entered the world) as well as the message we read throughout the rest of the Bible: God takes people seriously.

Recently I wrote to my friend and leading Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke to see what he thought about God’s question to Adam. Perhaps you’ll find an excerpt of his answer as enlightening as I have:

The omniscient God is not asking because he does not know. He is asking a real question -- this is not a charade -- to show his involvement with Adam--both an historical and archetype of humanity -- to provoke him to engage with him in dialogue. In short, God misses his fellowship.

God is asking Adam where he is because he misses him.

Waltke’s answer to my question makes God’s question to Adam into a sign of his love for Adam, and he goes further to explain that this dialogue is “an historical and archetype of humanity”. If nothing else, it means that this is the way in which God views his relationship with us. God enjoys being with us and interacting with us. And when the relationship grows cold, he misses us.

Could it be possible that when we move away from God, he notices? He misses us?

The British writer Julian Barnes begins his poignant memoir Nothing to Be Frightened Of with the words, “I do not believe in God, but I miss him.” Those words set the tone for a book in which Barnes writes about his complicated and fraught relationship with the transcendent. In his book, Barnes expresses his curiosity about what God is like. And amidst the deep and rich thoughts woven throughout the book, the reader never encounters the idea that while Barnes misses God, it might also be true that the God on the other side of the equation misses him.

To be honest, in all my thinking about God, it is just now that I am beginning to ponder the thought that when I move away from God on some level, he misses me. Could it really be possible that the God of creation misses me?

Could it be possible that when we move away from God, he notices? He misses us? God’s question to Adam, punctuated by Christ the Lord restoring the severed relationship through his death on the cross and resurrection, demonstrates God’s great capacity to love us.

As we approach Easter, wherever we might find ourselves on the spectrum of belief: whether we attend church, synagogue, temple, mosque or none; whether we have faith -- a little faith, beleaguered faith, or no faith -- the story of God asking that penetrating question to Adam and ultimately coming to us in Christ is the supreme portrait of what God is like. Easter reminds us that the nature of God’s love is such that when we walk away, God feels that loss, he misses us, and he comes looking for us.

Article

Belief

Creed

Leading

Politics

17 October 2025

5 min read

Let's keep hope weird, Zack

Amid growing grief for the future, the Greens' leader is calling for 'ordinary hope'

Lauren Westwood

Lauren Westwood works in faith engagement communications for The Salvation Army.

Zack Polanski returns to Manchester.

The Green Party

The recent Green Party’s political broadcast has been praised for its emotional clarity, moral urgency and a call to action that has seen party membership surge.

Looking down the lens, recalling his years growing up in the north of England, party leader Zack Polanski sighs,

“There was something in the air… a kind of ordinary hope.”

As he walks through a typical British city, filmed in Manchester, lined with terraced houses and bright-white lights beaming over takeaway shops and industrial bins, he diagnoses the collective hopelessness of a ‘people too tired to fight, to sleep.’

In just under four minutes, Polanski disarms objections to his cause with a sensitive, poetic script. He opens by referring to the common experience of a satisfying bowl of cornflakes – before plainly illustrating the socioeconomic injustice facing the everyman. He then makes the case for fair wealth taxation, and closes with the cheery challenge:

‘Let’s make hope normal again.’

It’s a compelling appeal that resonates with those weary of cynicism. But what does it actually mean?

To be clear, I call this to question because I desperately want good things for our country. Warm homes, clean air, safe streets and an NHS that works for all – I believe these things should be normal. But I’m not sure I want to normalise hope.

Because real hope is weird.

Hope is not to be confused with optimism, or good prospects, or a positivity about the future reserved for the privileged. It’s not increased with social mobility or sitting comfortably in a five-year plan. Hope is not even the belief that things will get better. Real hope is much truer than that. It is a deep knowing that all shall be well, even when that seems foolish – a glance through the ancient literature of the Bible points to hope as singing in a prison cell, relief in the wilderness, resurrection in the face of crucifixion.

As NT Wright, the theologian, puts it: ‘Hope is what you get when you suddenly realise a different worldview is possible, a worldview in which the rich, the powerful, and the unscrupulous do not after all have the last word.’ This kind of hope doesn’t waiver with the housing market, interest rates, or inheritance tax. It’s not the result of good policy or strong polling. It’s the stubborn belief that love wins – and has, in fact, already won – even, or especially, when it looks like all is lost.

This is where Polanski’s got it right. There is a present and growing grief for the future. Across the UK, millions feel disengaged, disrespected and undervalued. Distrust of politicians, division in communities and loss of faith in the systems supposed to be for our benefit seem to be at an all-time high.

Polanski’s call to hope comes at a time when a redeemed order seems impossible or, at best, several generations away. But, instead of accepting the kind of ‘ordinary hope’ Polanski experienced back in his youth, the answer to our deepest longing lies in realising we need something extraordinary to happen and knowing that we’re allowed to believe that it will.

We don’t need to be desensitised to hope – we need the opposite. We need to be reawakened to everyday glimmers of redemption – the neighbour who pops by for sugar and stays for a safe conversation, the health worker who acknowledges a former patient with a grateful smile, the family whose fear is soothed by the kind gesture of an elderly white neighbour – and recognise our share and our part in bringing it on, believing there is yet more and better to uncover.

Polanski is incredibly perceptive in his address to the concerns of the hard-working plumber and the fledgling hair salon owner, nervous that their hard earnings and ambition will be cut short: ‘I wondered, “Why did they think I was talking about them?” And now, I get it. It’s because it’s too hard to picture.’

Hope, too, is hard to see. A better world is hard to imagine. Though Polanski is advocating for a public reform and reimagination of what it means to be taxed, our souls are capable of the sudden realisation that another way is possible. We can experience life-altering revelation that leads to fresh vision, both for what is seen and for the yet unseen.

For the Christian, hope is not some far-out abstract concept, but a gift made real through belief in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ – a Middle Eastern man who walked the earth two thousand years ago, held no title, had no place to lay his head, and called himself the Way, the Truth and the Life. See? Real hope gets weird.

Instead of being content to accept an ordinary hope – made small, palatable and unremarkable – we can embrace hope as it was designed. A liberating reality that brings steady assurance to every thought, every reaction, every decision and, yes, every vote. This confidence comes not because we are sure of our own rightness, but precisely because we are not. We submit to its mystery because a hope that we can control, mediate and measure will never lead to the transformation we most long for.

Do I long to see an increased hope for the future across the UK? Of course. But do I believe we should ever grow accustomed to hope? I don’t think so. We need contagious hope – wild and holy and strange, anything but normal.

Tax the super-rich so that children can eat, parents can sleep, and ordinary people can be lifted out of extraordinary poverty, if you want – but let’s keep hope weird.

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