Where is God?

When tragedies occur like the Boston marathon bombing or the Newtown elementary school shootings, people ask “Where was God when this happened?” I was talking with someone recently who wanted to know “Why does God allow children to suffer?” These are hard questions, ones many of us struggle with every day in the work we do in healthcare.

As a chaplain, I’m sorry to say I don’t have any good answers.  But I am quick to affirm that God is here, suffering with those who suffer. In his book Night, Elie Wiesel, a Jewish concentration camp survivor, describes the execution of several inmates, including a young boy. As the other inmates were forced to look on, someone in the crowd asked: “Where is God now?” Wiesel wrote, “And I heard a voice within me answer him: ‘Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows.’”

I do not believe God is far away from those who suffer in Boston, or Newtown, or the children’s hospital where I work, or anywhere else in the world where evil rears its head. And I often catch glimpses of the God who cares in the faces and hands of those who are quick to respond to another human being in need. I was reminded in an email today from a fellow pediatric chaplain of the words of Mr. Rogers: “When I was a boy and would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’” Let’s always look for the helpers and stand ready to be one of them ourselves whenever our broken world demands. – David