Where Was God?

I read a great op-ed piece by James Carroll in the International Herald Tribune. Concerning the suffering in Haiti (and we might well include all suffering), he asks: What can Almighty God, the Lord of the universe, know about feeling utterly abandoned? Carroll's answer points to Jesus. God in Christ knows what it means to be alone and abandoned. Jesus felt the isolation, the suffering, and the abandonment in a world gone wrong.

There were no easy remedies or trite answers on the cross. That Jesus stayed on the cross – this is the best hope we have that He understands our sufferings; and, even more, that He intervenes for us before the Father, to help us when we feel tempted to give up (see Hebrews 2:17, 4:15-16).

The suffering of God in Christ on the cross was real. His suffering has become our one true source of knowing that God understands our plight. We abandoned Him a long time ago on that cross. Even now, some of us have abandoned Him. But His hand is outstretched to us as it was to that dying thief; the thief who found his only hope in this abandoned God on the cross. Dare we trust Him as much?

And if we have a glimpse through Him, or through our own circumstances, of being abandoned, then are we not called to reach out with our own hands to those in need? To bring hope and help to places like Haiti, and Chile, and to the countless people crying out, “Where is God?”.
In Christ,
George