About four weeks ago the death was announced of Harry Williams, the one time Dean of Trinity College Chapel and latterly a member of the Community of the Resurrection at Mirfield. I mention him, not only because he was one of the leading theologians of our time, but because of his tumultuous relationship with God. Here was a man of profound spirituality, someone whose life was bound by chains of theology that had been forged in the furnace of his own painful journey, someone who at times found himself unable to pray, let alone go into a church and minister there, who entitled his autobiography 'Someday I'll Find You' And yet someone who has led people to a deeper and fuller understanding of what it is to be a Christian. I just found myself wondering what he would have made of the first reading that we heard this morning. He and many others.

Listen again to what the author of the book of Ecclesiasticus wrote:

'Look at the generations of old and see; did ever any trust in the Lord and was confounded? Or did any abide in his fear and was forsaken? Or whom did he ever despise that called upon him?'

If you leave out the 'look at the generations of old' bit, then the answer to the three questions that are put is a resounding 'yes'. You and I will all be acquainted with people who seem to have been good God-fearing Christians, people whose lives are fully focussed on their faith who have found that, so far from God being a very present help in trouble, he appears in reality to be anything but. And when that is identified and recognised it causes all sorts of deep and painful wounds. Harry Williams has written eloquently of the very real anger and bewilderment that he experienced when he felt that he had been abandoned by God, and he is by no means alone. We can all identify with this sense of aloneness, of abandonment. I spoke on Tuesday to a friend who had spent the afternoon comforting a friend of hers whose son is currently undergoing chemotherapy and radiotherapy for a brain tumour. The child is eleven. One of her other children has Downes syndrome. She wonders why she has been singled out, as it seems to her, for such affliction. The pain is intolerable. And yet we read: 'For the Lord is full of compassion and mercy, longsuffering and very pitiful.' She would be forgiven for responding pretty cynically.

Harry is not alone, Fiona is not alone, you and I are not alone. There was a shriek of agony and fury, you'll remember, from one who thought he had a direct line to God, his Father, as he fought out the final hours of his life nailed to a cross: 'Why have you abandoned me?' And interestingly, it's not to his Abba that he cries out, not to the familiar, personal Father, but to 'My God, my God'. It's more formal, more distant.

The painful question besets us - How are we meant to respond? Is it that we are so inadequate in our response to the love of God? Paul says that God has commanded the light to shine out of the darkness and to shine in our hearts, but makes it quite clear that it is through the power of God that this occurs and that it is by no means we ourselves who are to be applauded for this. For we are only earthen vessels, breakable, porous, and ultimately replaceable, and yet chosen to contain the light of the world insofar as Christ will come to dwell in us.

We are presented with this tenson - we are chosen to contain and present the light of the world, and yet our lives seem to be one constant struggle against, as Paul puts it, trouble, persecution, depression. And it is no wonder, therefore, that we feel at times that we have been hammered into a corner and are constantly struggling to make sense of the inexplicable. Paul may assure us that although 'our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day'. This may be true, it may be something to which we may all aspire and even something for which we profoundly hope, but, oh boy, is it often hard to perceive, still less rejoice in?

I don't want to make out that our entire Christian journey is one of unparalleled gloom and utter misery, but it's not hard to find any amount of illustrative images in almost all our readings and hymns and prayers that suggest that the Christian path is not one that is abundantly strewn with primroses. Rather the opposite, in fact. I knew a very muscular Christian many years ago, a soldier from the ranks of the Evangelical brigade and a professional soldier as well as it happened. He said to me once that the way up the mountain was very steep and pretty treacherous, but the view from the top was wonderful and well worth the effort to get there. I'm still wondering how on earth you know when you have. St Paul isn't much help on the comfort stakes either; later in this same letter to the Corinthians he regales his listeners (with just the slightest hint of a boasting in his voice?) that he's been flogged, stoned, shipwrecked, hungry, deprived of sleep as well as having suffered the indignity of being lowered in a basket from a high window. And yet, and yet, he finds it in himself to rejoice and glory in these afflictions all for the sake of his ministry and the Gospel he is obsessed with proclaiming. Jesus himself was under no illusion as to the cost of discipleship: 'If anyone will come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow me.' It doesn't sound cosy, exactly.

But it is exactly that which yields the result. The outward man may perish, according to Paul, yet the inward man is renewed day by day. He goes on to assure us that ours is only a light affliction, a view that is echoed in the hymn 'O Happy Band of Pilgrims' - O happy band of pilgrims, Look upward to the skies, Where such a light affliction Shall win so great a prize.' I really struggle with that. I know that the demons which Harry Williams faced for much of his life and the awful pain that Fiona and Mark are currently enduring through the ghastly illness of their young son cannot be so lightly dismissed. These are not light afflictions; these are profound and agonising pains.

And what is the remedy? Well, there isn't one, at least not one that I can identify. There is no magic wand to be waved, as anyone who has experienced serious pain in his or her life will confirm. But it is not all gloom and doom. Indeed there are assurances to that effect that occur throughout the Bible, and very powerful they are too. Here's one from the 43rd chapter of Isaiah - King James' version: "When thou passest through the waters I will be with thee, and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee." God doesn't say 'there won't be waters, there won't be fire.' But he does say that when we are asked to endure such tribulation, we will not be alone. God himself will be with us.

In John's gospel, chapter 16, Jesus says to his disciples who are confused and frightened by what lies ahead:

"Ye now therefore have sorrow, but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice, and your joy no man taketh from you."

These are promises made by God the Father and God the Son, and directed specifically at us.

To end I'd like to return very briefly to the passage we heard from Ecclesiasticus, the first three verses.

'Ye that fear the Lord, wait for his mercy; and go not aside lest ye fall. Ye that fear the Lord, believe him; and your reward shall not fail. Ye that fear the Lord, hope for good; and for everalsting joy and mercy.'

Extract the three principal verbs - wait, believe, hope - we will not find thus created a panacea for all ills. But what we will find is that, whatever lies before us in our paths, God will be with us, guiding us and holding our hand, if we will but let him.

May it be so.