The Question Everyone's Asking

Where is God?

It's an easy question to answer when things are going well. It's entirely a different approach when things are going bad.

I'm one of these people who believe that every person, in their own unique way, asks the question, "Where is God?" In fact, I don't trust anyone who claims that they are immune from ever having the question enter into their mind. And one should never feel ashamed by asking it. Ultimately, it is simply a recognition that God is 'other' than us. He is transcendent. He is mysterious and cannot be contained by words or theories. So let's not beat up on the one's who ask it.

Truthfully, I am not consumed with the question of "Where is God?" Things are typically good in my life and I can easily accept the truth that God is not like me. Therefore, I do not quarrel much with God and can remain comfortable with the fact that the mess the world is in will ultimately be worked out in the end.

But I have asked it before...and so have you! So let's entertain the question for a moment. After all, it IS the question that everyone is asking. Even atheists have placed God in the camp of non-existence. They have placed him someWHERE.

Even C.S. Lewis wrote in his journal shortly after his wife's death from cancer, "Meanwhile, where is God? This is one of the most disquiting symptoms. When you are happy, so happy that you have no sense of needing Him, so happy that you are tempted to feel His claims upon you as an interruption, if you remember yourself and turn to Him with gratitude and praise, you will be - or so it feels - welcomed with open arms. But go to Him when your need is desperate, when all other help is in vain, and what do you find? A door slammed in your face, and a sound of bolting and double bolting on the inside. After that, silence. You may as well turn away. The longer you wait, the more emphatic the silence will become."

Wow, even C.S. Lewis! Double bolting???

So where is God? I can't answer it and if I thought I could, then I would be certain of one thing: that I am wrong. I would be better off trying to simply explain where God is NOT.

But I think Scripture help us out. Brian Jones, in his book Second Guessing God, brings out the point that before the Israelites entered the promise land, they also asked the question. The scene is the Jordan River and the characters are the many Israelites that had known nothing in life but wandering in the desert. The women, the children, the ones with disabilites...this is real world stuff. The blind must of heard the roaring river (it was the flood season) and wiped their faces and thought, "no way". The elderly were ready to hold hands with the young adults. They must have known that many would die; that this was another piece of the punishment puzzle that had been going on for decades.

But a miracle of God took place and here lies the importance. The water piled up (didn't dry up) many miles upstream in the city of Adam. The water dried up in front of them so that they could cross over but they were not actual witnesses to the wonderment of the water piling up in a different location.

I believe it is safe for us to take the above story and apply it to our own difficult situations. I am always reluctant to jump into 2008 so quickly. But I do believe that God is working for our good even though we may not see it, believe it, or understand it. Why must I see it, believe it, or understand it anyway? I am only disappointed by most things that I can see, hear, touch, feel, or smell. (I don't really know of ever being disappointed by a smell, but anyway...). So why not place all of our trust in the one person in our lives who is not confined and explained by our five senses?

God is always working upstream in our lives? And to consider the above story again, God loves to work generationally. Maybe my faithfulness is important because God wants to do something amazing through my children or my children's children. I can never fully know. But I can fully trust that God is working behind all the scenes of my life, working for the good, and providing me with what I need.

PROVIDEnce. God working upstream.