Where is God?
Readings for Today - AM Psalm 31; Jer. 24:1-10; Rom. 9:19-33; John 9:1-17
When my stepfather died, my mom couldn’t handle the loss of this bigger than life man we had all loved so much. He was the heart of our family and without him admittedly it was difficult. We were never quite the same again. Soon after, books began arriving in my mom’s mailbox. She needed an answer. She needed to understand why bad things happen to good people. Unfortunately, all the answers in the world never filled the hole in her heart.
What she experienced was a very common result of tragedy. People need logical reasons, an explanation why things happen. When a building collapses, who was the engineer who approved the structure that failed? Why did the doctor not recognize the signs and symptoms of a disease? Ultimately people ask how could a loving, all-powerful God allow these things to happen? When things seem as though they are out of their natural order people need to know why. They need answers so that they can make sense of it all. They need to know why, after all their prayers and pleas to God, after all the years of diligently trying to live a good life, they feel God looked the other way.
The Hebrew scriptures tell us that God visited the sins of the parents on the children which makes it seem even more unfair, more difficult to understand. But some rationalize and say, “Well that was the God of the Hebrews, that was not Jesus.” But even the Hebrew prophets didn’t like this explanation. They didn’t believe that God punished the innocent for the sins of others.
In today’s gospel when these questions are posed to Jesus, he doesn’t provide a neat tidy answer, at least not the kind of answer we’d like to hear. What he does say is that God is in the midst of the situation, not causing it but right there in the middle of the tangled messy tragic hard-to-handle mess.
A young girl once asked me if I had made God mad. In my surprise I said, “I hope not.” Her response was, “Well why did God give you cancer then?” I tried to explain that god doen’t make us sick or cause car accidents. That I was certain God cared about everyone who became ill or hurt. I also said I was just as certain that God shares our suffering, and pain and through us, the body of Christ, God reaches out to everyone.
These are hard questions, and Jesus doesn’t make it easy for us to understand. However, what we can be assured of is that even though God doesn’t fix our problems or jump in to prevent tragedy God loves his children and no matter what will never abandon us. The other thing we can count on if we have eyes to see it is God transforms tragedy, by working through us God can help to make these events more bearable, less difficult. We are not left feeling all alone. Thanks be to God.
Faithfully,
Sally+
Questions for Challenge and Reflection - Have you ever realized that you have been a conduit for grace? What was that like? How can we be more open, more available to being that person for others?