Where is God?

They had been wandering in the wilderness for weeks, footsore, frustrated and fed up with their leaders.  Where were they going?  When would they get there?  

Why couldn’t they have stayed in Egypt, where they had, if not the best food, at least not the same boring manna day after day.  Then, about three months after crossing the sea, they came to a place called Sinai where Moses, their leader, felt summoned by God to climb the mountain. Apparently, God made it very clear that the rest of the people were not allowed to ascend. To make very sure of this, a great cloud obscured the summit. When Moses finally came down he brought with him a new covenant between God and the people; the words which we call the Ten Commandments.

I wonder how I would have reacted had I been there?  Is this guy crazy?  He tells us that he met God up there but all I see is a big gray cloud. Or would I have taken Moses’ words on faith that, as hopeless as it all seemed, God would see them through to a new land and a new life.  And that God had made a covenant which was in effect a partnership with my tribe, giving us laws to live by and ways to love each other.

Each year, at this time, the Jewish people remember this event on the holiday Shavuot, seven weeks after Passover.  Some say that it is like a wedding between God and the Jewish people. Others might call it a birthday, when the Israelites learned who they were and whose they were.

For so long I have cherished this passage because in that covenant between God and the Israelites I hear God promising to accompany me on my passage through life.  It was only recently that I started to focus on the cloud which hid the summit.  Moses might have sensed God’s presence, but that darned cloud blocked any view others might have had. God could just as well not have been there as far as they knew.

In this world, in our time, I have been feeling God’s absence. Where is he as refugees displaced from the homes they have loved, make their own long and treacherous trek, with no promise of safe refuge?  Where was she in London? Paris? Orlando? Where has God been all this time in the desperate and ravaged land that God led those wanderers to ages ago? Will God come out from behind the cloud and safeguard us from today’s violence and hate, from all the poisonous ideas that are tearing communities and countries apart?  And, closer to home, do friends who face personal crises sometimes feel all alone: mourning the death of a loved one, facing a serious diagnosis, experiencing the shattering of a relationship? Sometimes it can seem as if the whole world has turned upside down.  Where is God now?

I wanted so badly to end this reflection on a positive note, yet sometimes I recognize that it is important to dwell in the mystery of absence.  If we say we believe there is a greater power beyond human knowing, then we can also admit feeling abandoned when we just can’t believe it. I like to think that God doesn’t take offense in those times. Although I can’t see God right now, I try to remember that God sees me.

We know the end of the old story: forty years later, they finally arrived in Canaan.  That’s an awfully long time to keep the faith!  But I guess if they could do it, then I can too.