WHERE IS GOD”? shouted a young father looking down on the lifeless body of his baby daughter nestled in his arms. The Children Hospital nurses were stunned into silence not knowing what to say. The grieving father yelled out again “WHERE IS GOD”? as his tearful eyes looked up to mine. I could not remain silent. I had to speak. I replied in a soft voice, “God is with your daughter in Heaven.” He closed his eyes and said, “God take good care of her.” Then we prayed.
Martha and Mary felt this pain. “Lord, if you had been here…”. Jesus healed so many yet was not there for his closest friend Lazarus. From their grief they cried out, “Where were you Jesus?”
How many friends of Jesus have also cried out, “Where are You, God, when I am suffering?” The suffering Job felt so abandoned by God that he wanted to look for Him. “If only I knew where to find Him; if only I could go to His dwelling!” (Job 23:3)
When life breaks your heart, you don’t have to go looking for God. God comes to you. God speaks in Psalm 34:18 “The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” I believe our crosses are like magnets drawing the presence and power of God to you. God will be there the most when you most need Him. I have witnessed so many examples of this with families at Children’s Hospital. I worked with parents who gave up everything back home to be near their sick child in their journey to health. This one dad quit his lucrative job, sold his house, turned down tons of money and went one million dollars in debt after his insurance capped out. He told me, “Nothing else matters except my baby girl.”
There are two little words in the Lazarus story that show the power of God’s compassion to His people who suffer. “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). The Greek word used for “wept” is embrimaomai. It literally means to “quake.” Jesus cried so deeply that His body shook. I don’t think Jesus was weeping over the death of Lazarus. He knew Lazarus would come back to life. Jesus wept from the depth of His spirit because God never intended suffering or death to ever be part of His creation. He wanted all His children to have a happy, beautiful life where sickness and death did not exist. Jesus was angry that the joy of the Garden of Eden turned into the pain of the Garden of Gethsemani. Jesus showed God the Father has deep love for His creation.
Yet God’s Love exists in a broken world. Jesus “came to His own people, and even they rejected Him.” (John 1:11) Humans killed Jesus whose only crime was that He loved us.
Bad things occur that make no sense, like the passing of a child, the devastation of a storm or the hell of war. The death and resurrection of Jesus offer hope. Jesus has won the victory over everything that hurts you. God makes right the meaningless sufferings inflicted on God’s people. Christians live in hope that God will bring goodness and grace from a world filled with chaos. The father who lost his daughter expressed hope when he said, “God take good care of her.”
God promises He will destroy all pain and suffering. “He will wipe every tear from their eyes, and there will be no more death or sorrow or crying or pain. All these things are gone forever.” (Rev 21:4) That day is coming.
