When everything is going well for us, where is God?

To anyone familiar with apologetics, C. S. Lewis stands out as a prominent figure. His philosophical reflections in The Problem of Pain are well known and stand within the long tradition of Christian thought on this topic. His work A Grief Observed, written in the furnace of intense suffering upon the sickness and death of his wife, Joy Davidman, reveals another dimension to this whole equation. Lewis writes in The Problem of Pain:

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We “‘have all we want’ ” is a terrible saying when “‘all’ ” does not include God. We find God an interruption. . . . Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call “‘our own life’ ” remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him. What then can God do in our interests but make ‘our own life’ less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible source of false happiness? It is just here, where God’s providence seems at first to be most cruel, that the Divine humility, the stooping down of the Highest, most deserves praise.

Extracted from "At the Border Crossing of Doubt and Hope"

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