Where Is God?

An elderly woman one day receives news that her kidneys are giving out on her. Her only hope of survival is a kidney transplant. She is very unlikely to get a new kidney because of her age. She goes on dialysis for the next year or so waiting, praying, that there is a kidney for her. Her prayers are answered and receives a new lease on life. She recovers faster than any elderly woman and most young folks doctors have ever witnessed. Days after she gets home she suffers a stroke and her next several weeks are spent in and out of consciousness until she is pulled off of life support. Where is God?

A young girl in high school has been picked on most of her life. She is what you would call a "goth" kid. Baggy Jeans. Slipknot shirt two sizes too big. A chain hangs from her waist to below her knees. Black nail polish and makeup. Because of all the rejection she faces she turns to drugs, alcohol, and random unprotected sex. She even begins to express that she is a lesbian. This makes the target on her back even bigger. Eventually she becomes so torn apart that she commits suicide. Where is God?

A man gets in his car and begins to back out of his driveway. He can feel the crushing of bones and hear the heart wrenching scream of a child. He gets out of his car to realize that he has just ran over and killed his eleven month old child. The only good thing about this is that it was a dream. He sits up in his bed scared to death and sweating profusely. He finally calms himself enough to go back to sleep. The next morning he wakes up late and rushes to get ready for the sermon he is to preach in church. With him running late he agrees to dress the kids and his wife would bring them to church. With his dream on his mind, he straps his eleven month old son into his chair in the dinning room. As he walks out the door he double checks it to make sure it is closed. He gets in his car. As he scrambles to fasten his seat belt a wave of fear washes over him. He even takes off the emergency break. He can't get himself to pull out quite yet. He checks his mirrors again and again. Still he feels an unshakeable fear. He can't rid his mind of the dream. He knows his baby boy is inside. Still he could not convince himself that his son was safe. He puts his emergency break back on and steps out of his car. As he rounds the back of the car he is mortified to she his little baby boy sitting behind the passenger side tire playing with his toy truck. Picking him up off the ground he is overwhelmed with emotion. God is here!

The first two stories are people I knew. The last a professor in Australia. Why is it that God seems present in this last story yet absent in the first two? There is no systematic theology that I know of (and trust me I've heard it all) that can answer this question. The danger with systematic theology is that it is systematic and God is not. How do we then answer these questions? There must be an answer! Even if it is hard to accept. Let us search not for a system God must obey, but for the desires that lie within the heart of the Almighty. I'll end this blog with a quote. "[God] is the great iconoclast."- C.S. Lewis