Isaiah 8:17 Meaning I Will Wait for Yahweh

Sometimes the sense of a warm, answering presence seems to withdraw, and a person is left staring at silence. I will wait upon the one who hides his face. The waiting itself becomes the work.

Most people fill that silence at once with worry, or chase after old comforts. Something steadier is possible. When the mind stops demanding a sign and keeps looking, a person finds that the presence was never gone. It had only slipped behind the noise he was making, and it waits to be met the moment he grows quiet.

The higher power withdraws its felt presence from the striving lower self, and the seeker is left to hold steady in the dark. Jacob, the supplanter, is the self still working by cunning and effort, the part of a person that grips the heel and pushes; from that house the face is hidden because presence is not seized by struggle. What remains is a quiet turning of attention inward, a looking toward what cannot yet be seen, until the felt light returns of itself.

The hidden face is not absence. It is the higher self veiling itself while the lower self learns to wait without grasping, keeping its gaze fixed on the source it has lost the feel of.

Jacob: the supplanting lower self that works by effort and cunning, the house from which presence hides itself The hidden face: the higher consciousness veiled within, present but unfelt while a person is held in the dark