A cry in the night

Over a number of summer nights I was shook from my sweet slumber by the same couple walking beneath my open bedroom window conversing in loud and inebriated tones. Over the course of a week or so they were like clockwork—very loud clockwork—and the conversations were a cornucopia of slurred, liquored chatter that was a convoluted combination of cursing and startlingly deep and thought-provoking sermon material.

On the last night of these midnight visitations, the robust banter went all-out theological. God, Jack Daniels and John Labatt were stirred together in a curious mix, and the results whetted my appetite for more as they rounded the corner and drifted off into the darkness to disturb someone else.

The man was quoting Scripture, talking about life and the reality of God. The woman, consistently the more obnoxious of the two, was throwing a classic God-objection in his face. “I have prayed and tried to see him,” she said. “I have gone to church,” she claimed. She recounted some of the pain in her life, the disappointments and anxieties, and then repeatedly called out to the Holy One: “Where is he? Where the %#&* is he?”

How would you answer her cry in the night?

Elie Wiesel, in his famous little book, Night, tells of prisoners in Auschwitz asking the same troubling and very human question: Where is God? We must take this question seriously. We must be with those who ask it. We must admit that even we who believe ask it. Even the Scriptures wonder, “O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer, and by night, but I find no rest” (Psalm 22:2). We must have an answer for the seeming hiddenness of God or we’re no longer human, let alone honest.

If you’ve ever walked with the frustrated, you know there are no pat answers. The fact that many rely on pat answers, clichés or Oprahisms is perhaps proof we’ve been far too asleep and in need of a midnight walk. Still, we must be able to point those crying in the night to hope, to some reason to believe, and the hiddenness of God is actually one of the more beautiful aspects of the reality of a loving Redeemer.

In remaining hidden God acts in grace and holiness:

• First, he does not coerce us into belief. God respects our humanity in all its created beauty and sin-induced brokenness.

• Second, he heightens the joy of discovery. God both looks for us and waits to be found, so that our joy is complete, even in the midst of trial.

• Third, and uniquely Christian, God enters our suffering. God does not ignore us, but meets us in our pain, and we are awakened to a grace and love that would never have come into view otherwise.

God in Christ enters humanity’s anguish and answers our question of where he is with a cross that flips the question around: “Where is humanity? Is this what you people do with love and grace? Who do you think you are? Do you crucify the Good and then blame the Good for not stopping you?”

Now there’s a question or two that might keep us up at night.