Part II — Where Is God? Rethinking Omnipresence

Christianity taught me to say, “God is everywhere.” Scripture taught me to ask, “Then why do some places feel empty?”

What is omnipresence?

Omnipresence is the idea that God is all present everywhere. Like Santa Claus in the song, who “knows when you are sleeping, knows when you’re awake,” God is often described as a being who is watching everyone at all times. This can be both comforting and disturbing. I believe that is intentional. Theologians and religious leaders perpetuate this definition of God as a means of keeping order. And while you could use ideas and concepts from the Bible to support such a position, it is not upheld well in Scripture. In fact, a stronger theme in Scripture encourages us to ask, ‘Where is God?’ and ‘Why does God seem to be absent?’ The Bible describes a God who has a primary residence, who comes to visit humanity, walk amongst us, and sometimes dwell near us. God can also cross boundaries, communicating with people who don’t even associate with God (like Balaam, Rahab, Pharoah, and others). 

If “omnipresence” means God is everywhere, the Bible complicates the idea. Scripture speaks of a God who dwells (in a garden, a tent, a temple), crosses boundaries into other realms or states (dreams, seas, empires), and sometimes God hides or departs. Rather than a static property spread thinly across the cosmos, divine presence in the Bible reads as relational nearness—promised, recognized, resisted, lamented, and embodied. The question is less—Where is God in space? and more—How does God draw near, and how do we know?

God Dwells: Tents, Temples, Gardens

Across the biblical story, God’s presence is not abstract or merely metaphysical—it is situated, embodied, and often disruptively close. God’s nearness is not uniform but dynamic, and it resists the kind of “omnipresence” that would flatten divine interaction into background noise. Instead, Scripture portrays a God who chooses to dwell, that is to say, God shows up and moves into peoples’ space.

In the Garden: Walking in Relationship

In Eden, God “walks in the garden in the cool of the day” (Gen 3:8). This moment follows Adam and Eve’s act of disobedience, yet what we see is not immediate judgment but the sound of God approaching, calling, “Where are you?”—a profoundly relational and ethical question. God’s presence here is audible, localized, and responsive. This is not a surveillance God looking on from a grand place, but it is a God who seeks a dynamic relationship with creation.

In the Wilderness: A Dwelling That Moves

When the ancient Israelites journey through the wilderness, they are instructed to build a Tabernacle—a mobile dwelling place crafted to host divine presence among a vulnerable, migrating people. The Tabernacle indicates an invitation for God to dwell among the people, and the narrative emphasizes God’s consent to draw near. The presence is not metaphorical—it is dense, radiant, and visible. The cloud leads, pauses, and signals movement (Exod 40:36–38). This divine glory is not tame; Moses himself cannot enter when it descends. The dwelling is divine initiative rather than human containment.

In the Temple: Present, But Not Contained

Later, when Solomon dedicates the permanent Temple in Jerusalem, the same glory fills the sanctuary, inhibiting the priests even from ministering (1 Kings 8:11). But Solomon’s prayer is striking. He acknowledges that even this sacred space cannot wholly contain God, emphasizing God’s willingness to attend humanity:

But will God indeed dwell on the earth? Even heaven and the highest heaven cannot contain you, how much less this house that I have built!

1 Kgs 8:27 (NRSV)

The Temple becomes a touchpoint of encounter, not a prison for the divine. Unlike Israel’s ancient neighbors who localized their gods in cult statues or shrine rooms, Israel’s theology retains both nearness and transcendence. God dwells—but never as a possession.

God Crosses Boundaries: Land, Sea, Empire

God’s presence in Scripture is not confined to sacred spaces or national borders. Divine nearness is not restricted by geography, politics, or even religious expectation. Instead, we find a God who moves freely across boundaries—land and sea, temple and exile, homeland and empire—challenging the assumption that holiness is tied to place.

Jonah famously attempts to flee “from the presence of the LORD” (Jon 1:3), as if God could be evaded by crossing the sea. But the storm contradicts him. God’s reach overtakes Jonah not just in Nineveh, the feared capital of empire, but on the waves themselves, revealing a presence that pursues, disrupts, and transforms. The sea—chaotic, ungovernable—becomes a setting for divine encounter.

Jacob, a fugitive running from his brother and from the consequences of deception, lies down in a liminal place—between homeland and unknown. There he dreams of a stairway reaching heaven and wakes up startled: “Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!” (Gen 28:16)

Presence surprises him not in Zion, but in a no-man’s-land, a wilderness threshold. The dream reveals a boundary-crossing God—a God who travels, who meets wanderers, who stakes claim not just in sanctuaries but in spaces of transition and exile.

Nowhere is this clearer than in Ezekiel’s vision. Exiled in Babylon, far from the temple in Jerusalem, Ezekiel sees what should be impossible—the glory of the LORD appears—not in Zion, but by the river Chebar (Ezek 1).

This vision radically redefines divine location. God’s presence is not limited to the holy city. Glory has gone mobile. This is not abandonment; it is accompaniment. The exile does not mark the absence of God, but a new and unsettling nearness that transgresses expectations.

Psalm 139 gives voice to this boundary-breaking presence:

If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.

Ps 139:9–10 (NRSV)

Far places are not forsaken places. The psalmist imagines geographical extremes—horizons, oceans, night itself—and finds that even there, God’s presence is already waiting. What looks like distance becomes the site of divine encounter.

This vision of presence is not about rootedness in sacred land alone. It is about pursuing mercy, a God who trespasses borders, steps over lines drawn by nations, and appears in the very places where God is least expected. From fugitive dreams to imperial capitals, from the bottom of the sea to the edge of exile, God’s presence shows up not to reinforce boundaries—but to cross them.

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God Can Be Absent: Hiddenness, Lament, and Departure

If the Bible tells the story of a God who dwells—walking in gardens, filling temples, traveling in tents—it also tells the story of a God who leaves, who hides, who is longed for and lamented. The sacred presence that once filled space with glory can vanish into silence, causing anguish not only for individuals but for entire communities. Divine absence is not just a problem for philosophers; it is a lived and narrated theological reality in Scripture.

The Laments: When God Feels Gone

The Psalms give voice to the spiritual crisis of absence. Psalm 13 accuses God of forgetting and Psalm 44 appeals to God’s distance, saying God is hiding.

These are not quiet internal doubts—they are covenant protests, offered by people who believe deeply enough to complain loudly. The psalmists are not addressing a metaphor or a memory; they are crying out to a real God who shouldbe present—and isn’t.

The Departing Glory: Ichabod and Exile

When the Ark of the Covenant is captured by the Philistines and Israel’s defeat is sealed, a mother names her newborn Ichabod, saying,

The glory has departed from Israel

1 Sam 4:21–22 (NRSV)

Later, the prophet Ezekiel dramatizes this glory literally lifting and leaving the Temple (Ezek 10:18–19).

This is not symbolic. It is a theological rupture. The God who once filled space with presence now withdraws, and Israel must reckon with a sacred center that has gone empty. This absence coincides with moral failure, injustice, and disregard for covenant responsibilities. In exile, they pray with aching hope:

Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation.

Isa 63:15 (NRSV)

The Silence of Barren Women and Abandoned Saints

Absence is also told in the stories of women. In the Bible, God shows up for mothers—Eve, Samson’s mother, Hannah, and Mary—to announce life and future. But first comes barrenness—the agonizing sense that life is missing where God is missing. These stories of waiting, pleading, and silence dramatize divine absence not just as theological concept, but as embodied longing for justice, continuity, and love.

Job famously insists that God is neither ahead nor behind, rather God is hidden (Job 23:8–9). And from the cross, Jesus cries out in the words of Israel’s lament:

My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Mark 15:34; Psalms 22:1

Even the Son of God enters into this cry—not to reject God, but to stand in solidarity with all who know the pain of divine silence.

Absence as Faithful Speech

These aren’t atheistic moments. They are faithful wounds, uttered in the space of covenant. They assume God oughtto be there—and speak that ache aloud. Lament is not rebellion but deeply ethical speech—rooted in the belief that God is just, that God hears, that God must respond.

Divine absence in Scripture does not invite theological neatness. It invites moral courage. It calls us to speak the ache, to ask the hard questions, to refuse to treat God’s silence as abandonment of covenant, even when it feels like it.

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Presence as Relationship: Recognized, Resisted, Mediated

The presence of God in Scripture is not primarily spatial or metaphysical, but deeply relational. God does not merely exist everywhere at once—God abides, walks with, remembers, turns toward, or hides the face. Presence in the biblical imagination is not passive but responsive; it is something that involves ethical engagement and reciprocal relationship. It is a divine act that invites human recognition.

Divine presence is not always obvious. It can be missed, misunderstood, or only recognized in hindsight. Jacob, waking from his dream at Bethel, exclaims in astonishment,

Surely the LORD is in this place—and I did not know it!.

Genesis 28:16 (NRSV)

Similarly, in the Gospel of Luke, the travelers on the road to Emmaus walk with the risen Christ but fail to recognize him until the moment he breaks bread with them. Only then are their eyes opened, and he vanishes from their sight (Luke 24:13–35). These narratives suggest that divine presence is often hidden in the ordinary, waiting to be revealed through acts of hospitality, memory, or shared experience.

God’s presence is also mediated. In the wilderness, it is seen in cloud and fire. Among the prophets, it comes through words that confront injustice. In the New Testament, presence is found in the breaking of bread, the sharing of the cup, and the embodied needs of the neighbor. Jesus locates himself not in a temple, but among the vulnerable: the hungry, the stranger, the prisoner. In the parable of final judgment, he teaches,

Just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.

Matthew 25:40 (NRSV)

In the Hebrew Bible, this ethical framing of presence is echoed in the words of Jeremiah, who commends a king not for religious devotion but for righteous action (Jer. 22:16). To know God is not merely to affirm God’s existence or location, but to act in ways that reflect God’s justice and compassion.

The First Letter of John also anchors divine presence in ethical relationship. It does not say that God is present where theology is precise or doctrine is pure, but rather, God abides in those who love (1 John 4:12). Love becomes the locus of divine abiding. Presence is no longer tied to place, but to people—people who love, serve, and create space for others.

If the term “omnipresence” points to a truth about God’s unbounded nature, then recognizable presence points to the human calling: to become people through whom God’s nearness becomes visible. Scripture invites us not simply to confess that God is everywhere, but to learn how to recognize God in the face of others, to mediate God’s presence through mercy and justice, and to become a community where divine love abides.

So… where is God?

The Bible resists a flat answer. Instead, it offers a layered response shaped by movement, presence, silence, and longing. God appears in places—a garden, a tent, a temple—but never stays confined to them. God travels across borders, shows up in dreams, walks through cities and wilderness, and speaks through prophets, strangers, and bread shared at a table. And yet, this same God also disappears. At times, God’s presence withdraws, hides, or delays. The result is not a contradiction, but a tension the biblical writers live within, one that is especially and exquisitely voiced in the Psalms.

The Psalms are Israel’s poetic heart, and they rarely settle for certainty. They sing of nearness—“You hem me in, behind and before” (Ps 139:5)—but they also cry out against unbearable distance: “Why do you hide your face?” (Ps 44:24), “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?” (Ps 13:1). These poems teach us how to hold God’s presence and absence in the same breath. They do not always resolve the ache; instead, they honor it with language, rhythm, protest, and praise. In the Psalms, we learn to speak to a God who feels near and far, intimate and elusive—sometimes in the very same stanza.

Omnipresence is less a metaphysical map, and more a lived promise: “I will be with you” (Exod 3:12), “I am with you always” (Matt 28:20). This promise does not erase silence or settle every question. But it does become a companion through lament, a thread of faith woven through the ache of waiting.

To practice presence—without pretending certainty—is to take up the Psalms as guides. Pray the laments. Let them tutor our speech when we cannot find God. Walk toward acts of justice and mercy, where God’s nearness is habitually disclosed (Jer 22:15–16; Mic 6:8). Watch the thresholds—those borderlands of movement, loss, and return—where recognition often breaks in, as it did for Jacob at Bethel (Gen 28:10–17). And attend to the neighbor—because if we are looking for Christ, he has already told us where he tends to be (Matt 25:31–46).

This blog is part of a series: The O’s Have It. Check out The O’s Have It Part I: God’s Omniscience in the Bible.

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