Where is God? It is an ancient question. Ever since Adam and Eve, as the result of original sin, our world beats with a mortally flawed heart. There is that ever-present reality of sin, sickness, suffering and death.
However much forces beyond our control contribute to a sense of helplessness and powerlessness, when we give in to frustration and anger, we only indulge in hopelessness. Though we are never without hope, this is a time of great challenge that can trouble the mind and grieve the heart.
Father Charles Lachowitzer
We are vulnerable and comparatively weak against the forces of nature. Only the forces of human nature act with conscious choice and deliberate intent. Our first parents experienced every parent’s nightmare and buried a child.
Fratricide, genocide, famine, plague, war and every injustice imaginable weave through all the chapters of history. It is from each wail of grief, that the question “why?” opens the mind to the question of God. Is there a God? And if there is, then where is God?
Even for the most devout disciples of Jesus, there is that contemplation on where to see God’s power in the midst of the existence of darkness and the forces of evil. The fragility of life lays claim to God’s greater power and heartfelt prayer to be delivered from every evil.
I often use in preaching two different images for reflecting on the presence and power of God when both seem absent. One is a light switch. The other is a set of weighing scales. First the light switch. Imagine going into a room and it is dark. We do not look for a switch to turn off the darkness, rather, we look for a switch to turn on the light.
Spiritually, we are reminded that there is no switch to turn off the darkness. Jesus Christ himself suffered and died on the cross, not to take away the world’s darkness, but to be the light through it.
From the beginning of creation, God gave light the power over darkness. Even in a pool of water deep inside a cave where it has been dark for so long the fish are blind, a visitor need only to hold up one lighted candle and that ancient darkness flees.
With the rising of the Son on Easter morning, the darkness has no power in the presence of the light. God listens in love to all prayers, but we ourselves can move beyond the prayer to “turn off the darkness!” and instead pray for the light of Christ that leads us through it.
When we were baptized, we were proclaimed as “children of the light.” Through the presence of the Holy Spirit, we still have that flame of faith burning in our hearts. It is an inner light that shines on the path to Jesus, light of the world. We are called to shine this light on those in their darkest hour.
The second image is a set of weighing scales. This image has been long-used in the legal system for justice. It is also a biblical image for human injustice, when the seller fixes weights to cheat the buyer out of a fair measurement.
As a spiritual image, on one side of the scale, there is the weight of sin, suffering and death. We are powerless to lift it off the scale. It is a large boulder and includes everything that is wrong, false and evil.
Add to this weight the heaviness death brings to this side of the scale. We are too weak to drag it along our pilgrim path. On our own, we have no greater weight to balance that scale.
Where is God? On the other side of the scale. The smallest of little joys, a mere pebble, is given by God the grace of great weight. On this side of the scale, God takes the cross of Jesus Christ and the rolled-away stone to counterweigh the other side and its burden of sorrow with the joy of faith. When the scales are balanced, we can move forward along the pilgrim path.
So, light a candle and seek the little joys each day. Be a light for others. Through even the smallest acts of faith, hope and love, be a pebble on God’s side of the weighing scale. In the light and through the weight of grace — this is where God is.
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