Where is God?

My tears have been my food day and night, while they continually say to me, "Where is your God?" (Psalms 42:3, NKJV)

Have you ever been at that point in your life where this question, “Where is your God?”, hang around your life like that dark cloud that neither pours rain nor drifts away in the wind. It’s just there. By now I know I am asking a rhetoric question with an obvious answer. Mark you, the question is different from “Where is my God?” The former is inspired by external factors while the latter is fueled from within self. For this blog post’s purpose, I wish to dwell on the question that is often asked by people and even circumstances that are opposed to our progress as Christians. They ask “where is your God?”

Even when you do not doubt for once that the good LORD is there continually with you acting on your behalf behind the scenes, there will often appear persons who will question it all: is He really with you? Even difficult situations will arise that silently ask you, “where is your God?”

David in psalms 42 was in such a state. His tears wetting his pillow in the night because his enemies were continually saying to him, “Where is your God?” He explains it further in versus 10, how it felt like;

As with a deadly wound in my body, my adversaries taunt me, while they say to me continually, "Where is your God?" (Psalms 42:10, RSV)

It’s a terrible feeling this question can bring in your life. This question potentially can afflict your soul, bring anxious uneasiness or grief. Reading through the whole psalm 42 shows you that David was so aware of the goodness of God and His ability to help Him. Only this question had wearied his soul?

Sometimes the people asking this question do so by purely observing the occurrences in our lives. They see you weighed down by a disease, they see you lose that job, they see you remain in that same place for a long time, nothing is changing and they ask, “Where is your God?” They see your father or mother or child die because of cancer or that other disease, they look around and you are still not marrying and there are no signs for it, and they repeat the same question like a hymn stanza. And almost this questions win you over to be doubtful!

At a time when Israel had been brought very low (going to captivity and suffering much in the sight of the heathen nations), a psalm by Asaph was written and in Psalms 79:10, he says;

Why should the nations say, "Where is their God?" Let there be known among the nations in our sight the avenging of the blood of your servants which has been shed. (NKJV)

Similarly in Psalms 115:2,

Why should the nations say, "Where is their God?" (RSV)

Let the priests, who minister to the LORD, Weep between the porch and the altar; Let them say, "Spare your people, O LORD, and do not give your heritage to reproach, that the nations should rule over them. Why should they say among the peoples, 'Where is their God?'" (Joel 2:17, NKJV)

Yet still even when the people ask or when those difficult circumstances conspire together to say, “Where is your God?”, still we know,

But our God is in heaven; He does whatever He pleases. (Psalms 115:3, NKJV)

For I know that my Redeemer lives, And He shall stand at last on the earth; And after my skin is destroyed, this I know, That in my flesh I shall see God. Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. How my heart yearns within me! (Job 19:25-27, NKJV)