Where is God?

The mother who loses a child to a car wreck, the husband who loses his wife to cancer, the teenage girl who loses a boyfriend to a freak accident while on spring break, the parents who learn that their son died of a roadside bomb in Iraq: they have all asked "Why?" They have all asked, "Where is God?"

And what is the best answer? What is the right answer? What is the real answer, if different from the two previous questions?

The longer I live the more I have learned to content myself with saying, "I don't know." It's comforting to realize that we do not need to defend God. We do not need to explain God (as if we really ever could explain God). We do not need to excuse God. We do not need to exonerate God. God is who God is. And God will be who God will be. And God will be what God will be.

In the face of ugly circumstances that smash our sense of right and wrong; in the face of tragedies, both natural and moral, we cannot ever satisfactorily, or ultimately answer the crying mother's question of "Where is God?"

But we can say this: The God we know in Jesus does not forsake us.