It seems hard to believe that someone like Mother Teresa in later life should have written to her spiritual confidants revealing that inwardly her sense of the presence of God, that she had previously found quite overwhelming, seemed absent. However, as Bryan Patterson, writing in the Sunday Herald, said: “In the end, this ‘dark night of the soul’ period led her to an acceptance that God was always with her, even when she didn’t feel it.” And that, essentially, is what faith is.
The Bible says that faith is “being sure of what we don’t see.” and sometimes it means holding on to what our innermost being tells us is true, even when we don’t feel it. It’s what enables us to say, “I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining. I believe in love even when I don’t feel it, and I believe in God even when I don’t see him.”