In the last couple of months, our world has been turned upside down and seems unrecognizable. Our circumstances have become a priority and our imagination is growing in leaps and bounds trying to make sense of all the chaos, violence, and unrest in the world. Some of us are calling out asking the question, where is God in all this? As frustration and different voices take center stage, this lingering question is not silenced quietly in our minds.
To devote Christians, this question is disheartening because we know in our hearts and deep in our soul that God is always with us, no matter what the circumstance may be.
He who is of God hears the words of God;
for this reason, you do not hear them,
because you are not of God.”
John 8:47
It is how we decide to answer that question that will change our perspective that will either keep us on the faith journey to be closer to God or will derail us from God and into a destructive world fueled by excessiveness and our ego.
Our society has abandoned God’s way and has created its own righteousness. When we lose our identity with God, we start to self medicate ourselves with words and activities we believe will heal us. We have left God out of the picture as the creator, healer, and advisor, instead, we have promoted ourselves in his position. God is always present and his “stillness” is mistaken for absence in our lives. His “silence” is where his voice is the loudest, speaking directly into our hearts, asking us to open our hearts to his love.
Where is God in all this? He is in each one of us. We need to spend more time in “silence” and prayers to hear his voice. God has not abandoned us, our ears and eyes are closed off to him because we have closed off our hearts. When this question pops in your mind, take a few minutes to break from what you are doing to sit in silence. Instead of asking this question blinding, direct it towards the Lord. He will answer it through your heart. Patience is the key to hearing His voice.
Like the air we breathe, we have to trust that it will always be there when we wake up every morning and have faith that there will be enough of it to go around. It is formless, invisible but ever-present. God is present like air in ways that we are not able to discover all his depth, mystery, and goodness that is His. It is in the “stillness’’ that the right actions will arise that will quiet our hearts and mind in asking the question, where is God in all this?