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Painting/photo of Jerusalem Temple-Casual English Bible

For the brokenhearted, where is God?

Stephen M. Miller
girl looking up
QUESTION FOR GOD. My friend is hurting. Where are you? Photo by MartinaKPhotography.com.

IT’S THE QUESTION OF THE WEEK.

It comes from Dini Garcia in Florida. She gets a free book for asking a question that made the cut for the Monday Question of the Week feature.

Here’s her question:

I have a friend who has had a terrible loss. As a friend, I have tried to reach out to him. I feel so hopeless, and all I can do from a distance is comfort him with quotes from the Bible. My heart is broken for him! Where is God when these situations occur?

Yeah, that’s the big question.

I struggled with that in a blog I wrote after that kid shot all those kindergarten children: Can’t Almighty God stop a shooter?

I’m not sure where the God of heaven and earth is when tough things happen…when survivors are left with a massive loss: a dead child, a spouse, a parent, even a pet (I’m learning from Buddy the Dog, who is healthy at the moment).

Last week a nephew of mine emailed me. He said he was asking around to find out what one question people would ask God if they could.

So he wanted to know what question I would ask.

I wrote him back. I said the question I’d ask is:

“What in the heck were you thinking?”

I was kind of kidding. But kind of not.

So much of Creation makes no sense to me.

  • Survival of the fittest with its top of the food chain/bottom of the food chain…critters killing critters to survive.
  • Cancer.
  • Tornadoes.

If God’s a Good Guy, this can’t be the way he wanted it.

And what has been going on among we humans for as far back as history can trace us can’t be what he intended for us.

If he’s the Good Guy, something somewhere went terribly wrong.

But what about your friend who’s hurting?

Where in the world is God?

Let’s ask Jesus.

Don’t let your hearts be troubled. Trust in God, and trust in me. I will not leave you alone like orphans.

In a little while the world will not see me anymore, but you will see me. I am in my Father, and you are in me and I am in you.

I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper to be with you forever.

This Helper is the Holy Spirit. (Excerpts from John 14, New Century Version)

I don’t know why God lets bad things happen. And I’d really like to know what in the heck he was thinking.

But I believe that when a family member or a friend or anyone in our general vicinity suffers a loss, in at least some real sense, it is God in us who reaches out.

At 1:15 on a November morning my wife and I got a call from our 22-year-old daughter, sobbing hysterically. Fresh out of nursing school and working at a children’s hospital, she was helping another nurse with a baby. The other nurse accidentally stuck her with a needle that had been in the baby.

Protocol required that the child’s blood be tested.

The rapid test came back positive for HIV.

Our daughter was calling from the car. The supervisor was sending her home.

I think I know where God was about 45 minutes later.

He was standing under a streetlight hugging my daughter and crying.

He was me.

And he was my wife.

We drove to where our daughter lived. We beat her there by about five minutes.

She pulled up behind us and got out of her car.

My wife reached her first.

It’s one of the most vivid, poignant scenes of my life: watching my wife and my daughter cry beneath a street light at 2 in the morning.

I don’t know how God was there for my daughter, exactly. If he was there just in me and my wife. Or if he was there some other way, too. But I’m pretty doggone sure he was there.

If Jesus wasn’t kidding, at the very least God was there because I was there. And because my wife was there.

So here’s the question. Where is God for Dini’s friend?

Jesus is in God. Dini is in Jesus. Jesus is in Dini.

So, Dini, be God to your friend.

I don’t know how you’re supposed to do it. But I think the Helper knows. He’s in you, too. If Jesus wasn’t kidding.

None of this makes sense to me. I can’t understand how it works.

But I know it does.

I’ve seen it under a streetlight at 2 in the morning.

Epilogue: Our daughter did not contract the HIV virus. Later, more accurate testing, showed that the baby did not have the virus. By the time we found that out, about a week later as I recall, our daughter had already started HIV-fighting treatment with some hardcore meds—which she was delighted to stop taking.

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About Stephen M. Miller

STEPHEN M. MILLER is an award winning bestselling Christian author of easy-reading books about the Bible and Christianity and author of the Casual English Bible® paraphrase. His books have sold over two million copies and include The Complete Guide to the Bible and Who’s and Where’s Where in the Bible.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Dinorah Garcia

    July 15, 2013 at 4:48 pm

    Thank you, for featuring my Question of the week On your blog!!! Something great moved In me! Perhaps your words to me. Now? How? Do I receive my book?

    GOD Is awesome
    Thanks again

    Reply
    • Stephen M. Miller

      July 15, 2013 at 5:28 pm

      Hi. Just pick one of the following books and email me the address to where I should mail it. See my “Contact” page for the email address.

      Thanks again.

      • Illustrated Bible Dictionary
      • Bible Snapshots
      • Understanding Jesus (text only version of Jesus of the Bible)
      • Jesus of the Bible (illustrated)
      • Complete Guide to the Bible, Spanish Edition (La Guia Completa de la Biblia)
      • Complete Guide to the Bible, Student Edition
      • Student’s Guide to the Bible (first edition of Complete Guide/student edition)
      • Incredible Mysteries of the Bible
      • How to Get into the Bible
      • Complete Guide to Bible Prophecy

      Reply
  2. Susan Death Hughes

    July 15, 2013 at 6:55 pm

    When I lost my oldest son in 2006 (his life taken by someone else) God was with me EVEN though at the time I was not with God. Many years I had walked away from Him, but He never left me. A year later a dear cousin invited me to a Christmas Cantata and at the end of that service I renewed my faith in God, asked for his forgiveness and am still serving my Savior to this day. Sad to say, my dear cousin went home to Jesus in June of 2007. Continue offering your words of encouragement to your friend, Dini. and pray.

    Reply
    • Stephen M. Miller

      July 15, 2013 at 7:04 pm

      Oh my. Thank you, Susan. That’s the kind of pain you never get over. That happening to one of my kids is my worst fear. I can’t think of anything that would hurt me more.

      Reply

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