I am delighted to welcome Joy Margetts to my blog today, with a guest piece that looks at the themes of her latest book: The Stranger. Joy is a fantastic writer: do check out all of her books. She wrote about the themes in her first book, The Healing, and her journey to getting it published on my website back in 2021 so it is wonderful to welcome her here again.

I wonder if you have ever asked: Where are you God? If we are honest, we have all been in that place of not sensing God’s presence. Perhaps that has been combined with the other big question, ‘Why God?’

Life is not always easy. Bad things happen – loss, grief, trauma, pain and sickness are all real. Sometimes when we are in the middle of the worst experiences of our lives, when we really need to feel God’s closeness, to hear his comforting voice, to know his peace, suddenly he seems incredibly far away.

A lonely journey

The Stranger tackles those themes. At the beginning of the story we meet Brother Silas, a man broken by life’s circumstances. The great service for God that he had poured everything into lies in ashes at his feet. Once a man full of faith, now he feels God’s absence and questions everything. He runs – from his home, his vocation, his faith and from God. The journey Silas takes is a lonely one, but there are glimmers of hope along the way, as he meets people that he finds connection with, as he experiences miraculous happenings, and as he reunites with an old acquaintance. As his physical journey comes to an end, as one of my reviewers put it, Silas rediscovers that the faith he thought he had lost, he had never really lost at all.

Drawing on personal experience for The Stranger

As in all of my fiction, in writing The Stranger, I was writing from my own experience. There was a season in my own life where everything suddenly changed. A sudden illness became a chronic condition and it robbed me of many things: a ministry role that I was flourishing in, a job that I loved, the joy of travel and discovering new things, being the wife and parent I wanted to be. I couldn’t understand why God had allowed it, especially as it came at a time in my life when I was contented and looking forward to the future with excitement. I begged him for healing, believing wholeheartedly that he would answer me. My loved ones prayed with faith, too, but nothing changed. I started to question everything, and soon hopelessness and despair took over. God seemed a million miles away – if he were there at all.

I had been a follower of Jesus all of my life. I had seen God do miraculous things, change people’s lives radically. I had experienced sweet times of feeling his tangible closeness, heard his voice speak clearly and yet in the time when I needed him most, I could not find him. The temptation to run, from everything I had ever believed in, was real.

Finding hope again

I was able to write The Stranger recently, some years later, because actually it is a story of hope. I think there are many reasons why we can struggle to hear God or feel his closeness. Fear, doubt, disappointment, anger, sin – these things can all create a barrier between us and our Father. Has he really left us when we needed him most? I don’t believe so. He promises in his Word, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you’ (Hebrews 13:5, NKJV). My testimony is that of course he had not abandoned me. I could not trust my feelings, or my understanding during that traumatic time. I had to choose to believe his promises.

Like Brother Silas, God brought people into my life to demonstrate that he was real, and that he cared about me. He spoke through his Word, and eventually I began to hear the sweet whisper of his voice again, as I repented for building a case against him. In hindsight, I can look back at so many times when God was obviously there. 

My healing still hasn’t come fully. I still have some of the same struggles, but my God is faithful. He loves me, and he will work all things together for my good (Romans 8:28). I don’t have to understand what that looks like, I just have to trust him, and enjoy being loved by him.

In The Stranger I portray human brokenness, but I also write with understanding about a God who never leaves his beloved children. Even when they try to run, he will pursue them, gently and persistently, until they finally find themselves fully back in his embrace.

Joy Margetts loves writing and loves the Word of God. A retired nurse, mother and grandmother, she also has a lifelong interest in history. Her works of Christian historical fiction are inspired by her own faith journey, and set among the beautiful Welsh landscapes of her adoptive homeland.

Her books are available on her website , The Stranger can also be bought direct from the publisher  and all are widely available elsewhere online and through good bookshops.