Where is God?

Brett and I are trying to reel in our consumption of cable news which has a habit of playing in the background on our kitchen TV.  Staying informed is important, but when the dire images leave you distressed and immobile, it’s time to make changes.  Our TV now plays the Tennis Channel most of the time, relegating the news for the evening and early morning hours.

For those of us who grew up in the 60s, this barrage of news contrasts sharply with the limited 3-channel access we had on our one and only television set.  (I can still see my mom – sipping Dubonnet, stirring a pot on the stove, listening to Walter Cronkite deliver the evening news – which was no less dire as today’s by the way, with wars, assassinations, and protests… probably why she had her Dubonnet!)

But whether we’re living in the turbulence of 2020 or that of the 60s, we ask, Where are you, God?  Hurricanes are raging; human rights are being trampled.

God, do something. 

Corrie Ten Boom would probably have responded with a two-word sentence,

“He did.”

Corrie was in her 50s, an unmarried, Dutch watchmaker.  During the Nazi occupation of Holland, she became an unlikely activist in the Dutch Underground, hiding Jews in her family’s sprawling home.  She and her sister, Betsie, were eventually arrested and sent to a concentration camp where their faith in God held fast even in the face of abject evil.

Corrie later observed,

“If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed.

If you look within yourself, you’ll be depressed.

But if you look at Christ, you’ll be at rest.”

She also said,

“There is no pit so deep, that God’s love is not deeper still.”

I have no answers this side of heaven for the whys of human suffering.  But my Christian faith tells me, as it did Corrie,

God came down.

God wept over human suffering.

God in Jesus died on our behalf.  And rose from the dead.

So that the apostle Paul could write, “O death, where is thy sting?”

So that we CAN find rest.  Incongruous as that may seem.

 

Where is God? 

He is in the pit next to us, asking us to trust Him, leading us to Heaven where Corrie and my mom, are drinking Dubonnet in praise. Or at least my mom is.

 

Image courtesy of  dreamstime.com.  (https://www.dreamstime.com/illustration/breaking-news.html)

Read about Corrie Ten Boom in the book, The Hiding Place.