G-d is Compassion. He looks at our efforts to rectify our ways during The Days of Awe. Even if it seems that while we are taking a hard look at ourselves and attempting to make changes, that He might be distant, He is really never closer than when we seek to correct what we have messed up, because that is when we need Him the most.
If He really was distant from us, then how can He say:
Isa 1:18
“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the L-RD; though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”
“let us reason together” – that is not the words of Someone who has distanced Himself from someone – it’s the words of Someone who desires to bring us through the work of self-reflection and honest assessments of our wrongs, our life stories and our doubts, walking side by side with us. At the end of that walk what used to be sullied, soiled and broken will be clean, pure and healed.
There’s midrash about a king who had a son.
The son had left home a long time ago after a fall-out with his father, and had moved a long way away from where he came from. The king, his father, sent out messages telling his son to come home. One of those messages reached the son, and he responded “I can’t, it’s been to long and it’s too far to walk”. The King then sent another message saying “It doesn’t matter, you start walking now and I will meet you on the road where ever you are and we will walk the remaining stretch together”.
That’s G-d for us – meeting us on the way, walking with us and reasoning with us about what we have been doing with out lives the past year, so we can come to peaceful, healing and constructive conclusion on Yom Kippur.