Where is God?
The Crucifixion, Matthias Grunewald, 1525.
When I try to remember me at 13 years of age, my whole body changes. I feel heavy, sluggish, as if twenty-pound weights are hanging from my arms and legs. My breathing slows. My stomach tightens. I was in hell, then, and when I try to remember, that hell returns. Memory is harsh.
I was on order. After school, I would have to visit this man. Over the weekend, I would have to go to that man. It didn’t matter if I didn’t want to. It didn’t matter if I was sick. I didn’t matter. The only thing that did matter was the money coming in to support our family. I was an expensive child, I was told. How could I not contribute in this way?
My experience and the suffering of so many others leaves us all asking, and rightly so, where is God in this?
I know where.
God was right there, with me, and I knew it, somehow. Jesus on the Cross had always meant so much to me. (And why not? Jesus was stripped, exposed, tortured, and put on display on the Cross. How could that image not speak to me?)
Big deal, you say? God didn’t stop the sexual assaults. My prayers for rescue were not answered? Not in the way I asked, no, but let’s move in closer and see how my prayers were answered.
What happens when we contemplate Jesus on the Cross? What actually happens to us when we consider Him, ask Him, open our hearts and minds to Him? I will tell you what happens: we change. We grow in wisdom, knowledge, strength, resolve. We are comforted and informed. And this comfort and information is coming from God himself. Imagine the heft of that!
We cannot dismiss nor minimize the impact of God’s grace and presence with us as we suffer. We must not. In opening ourselves to this grace and presence, we open ourselves to utter transformation!
Reflection
Ponder your own suffering. Look for God. Where do you sense His intervention?
Prayer
Dear Jesus, may I be open to You! I can shut my eyes! I can say You are not here! I can choose to turn away from Your grace, Your wisdom. Oh, may I not do this when my suffering or that of others does not go away! May I continue to look, hear, and receive. I am changed by Your love. May I lay my suffering down, right next to your own. Amen.