We Are Never Alone

This week I was given a new perspective on frustration over injustice and suffering. Many times my ignorance can blind me from seeing what is really going on around me or to doubt that God is really present. This last Thursday we watched the movie Shooting Dogs, which I recommend to everybody. It is a difficult movie to watch, but very powerful. It is about the Rwanda genocide and the difficult things that happened during that time. At one point in the movie this young British missionary who has just seen mutilated bodies, and one of his friends with a bloody machete, ask “where is God?” I confess that I too ask this question sometimes. When hungry children are always knocking at my door, when I hear the stories of children dying at the health center, when the poor is stealing from the poor… Later in the movie when this British missionary and a British priest have to make the decision of whether to stay or go, the priest answers the young man’s question by saying that God is right here, hurting and suffering right along with His children and He will never leave them. Sometimes I cry out to God either for myself or for others thinking He is this far away God who doesn’t understand the pain. But he understands pain and suffering far greater than I or anyone else ever could. He weeps and mourns with those hurting and grieving more than I ever could, He faces rejection more than I ever will, and He cries out for His children who are hungry. I think at times I believe that if I think this way about God, it somehow belittles him, but really it makes Him even greater. We serve a God who not only protects us, but also suffers and cries with us, and understands on a far greater level all that we see and feel.