Where is God?

Do you ever find yourself in painful situations or look around at all the turmoil in the world and wonder, “Where is God?” Do you struggle to find God’s will through all the perplexing decisions you have to make? Does God seem far away?

As a pastor, I watch people struggle with this question all the time, and there are times I struggle with it myself.

I used to work as a library administrator. One day I couldn’t find my glasses. I looked high and low, through drawers and cabinets. I turned the place upside down searching, but to no avail. I was getting desperate when one of my employees asked what I was doing. When I told her I couldn’t find my glasses, she gently put her hand on my arm and said, “Steve, you are wearing them!”

My glasses were so close that I didn’t see them, and my frantic searching actually kept me from stopping long enough to realize I had them on all the time. I think our search for God can be like that sometimes.

Martin Luther once said that God is closer to us than we are to ourselves. The Scriptures tell us that God is always with us; that God never leaves us or forsakes us. But sometimes we get so hung up looking out there somewhere for signs of a distant God that we don’t realize how close God is to us.

In our pain, or sorrow, or anxiety, or perplexity—God is with us, in and through it all.