God, His People, and Showing Up
“If God is good, if He loves me, then where is He? Where is he in the midst of my pain? Where is he in the moment of my suffering? Where is God?!”
The tears rolled down her face and I was left speechless, unable to respond. Not because I didn’t have anything to say, but because all I had to say was some theological mumbo jumbo that sounds good on paper and in class but in the moment, right in the thick of someone’s suffering, means nothing to them or even to you. Because in our suffering we don’t want high-minded theology, we want comfort and love; the exact things that we feel have been stolen from us. We want answers. And the main question we often have is, “Where is God?”
We want to know where God is while we are suffering.
And maybe my speechlessness was a result of something else. Perhaps it was because I too have wondered the exact same thing. We all have. We all have been in those shoes, neck deep in our calamity and struggling to keep our heads above the wake, wondering in that moment where exactly this Emmanuel, “God with us”, is exactly?
Because that’s the most honest question there is in those times, isn’t it? Often, pain blinds us to God’s presence, so when pain shows up on the scene it’s hard to believe God is there too. So yes, where is God? Where is God when you learn about the cancer? Where is God during and after the miscarriage? Where is God when an unarmed black teen gets shot to death running from the police? In those moments, the darkest pits of the human experience, where is God? Sure, we can say that God is there, but where? Where can we look and see that God has indeed not abandoned us? When our perceptions and experiences tell us that God is not with us, where can we look to see Emmanuel?
His Church.
God has chosen to reveal Himself to the world through many ways and one of those ways is His Church. He has chosen the Church to be a visible representation, a vessel, of His love, compassion, and mercy towards the world. Therefore, the Church is meant to be the physical representation of God’s presence in times where pain and suffering make his presence seem distant; so that no one can ask, “Where was God?”, because they see that He was there the whole time, tangibly, in the form of His people.
And Church, we have failed. We know we have failed because there is ever such a question as “Where is God?” Because we are the answer to the age-old question . No one should be able to ask such a question, because when loved ones die; when the layoffs come; when disaster strikes and people are left in its wake; we should be there, allowing people to look at us and see that God is there despite all the evidence that screams “HE ISN’T”. We should be in the darkest dampest pits of hell on earth. We should be at every place and moment of misery so that when people (Christians and non-Christians alike) ask, “Where is God?” we can say that He was right there in the middle of their suffering; that those people that showed up when no one else would, those people who were there when they had seemingly better things to do, they were Christians, they are the Church, the Body of Christ, the physical representation of Him being there. God was there, in His people.
People have questions, “So where was God when I developed cancer?”; “Where was God when my baby didn’t breathe?”; “Where was God when I felt unwanted?”; “Where was God when I was being abused?”; “Where was God when my house foreclosed?”, “Where was God during the Boston Marathon?” and the Church must be the evidence of the answer. That He was right there in the middle of the mess in the form of regular and seemingly insignificant people, the Church. Let us be the evidence to the answer. Church, let us render the question “Where is God” meaningless by showing up and showing up on time. Because God is there in the hospital rooms, the funeral homes, and the abortion clinics; and He wants His Church to be tangible evidence of it.