God Questions

Slaughter of the Sandy Hook Innocents.

“I heard and my heart pounded, my lips quivered at the sound; decay crept into my bones, and my legs trembled.  Yet I will wait patiently for the day of calamity to come on the nation invading us.” (Habakkuk 3:16)

When Job lost his children to unexplained evil he confronted God.  God does not need a defense attorney.  God Himself answered from the whirlwind.  God’s answer to Job’s questions was a long series of God Questions which tell Job, in essence, “God is able.” When confronted with unspeakable, utterly senseless destruction of life, we can ask, “God if you are able, why do you not act?”  And Jesus will weep with us as we cry out, “If you had come earlier they would have lived! Where were you?”  We weep, bitter tears of great sorrow, springs of water spilling from broken hearts through eyes that flow like broken faucets. Unable to find words that could have any meaning to the survivors of the Innocents, we embrace them in a universal spiritual community.  And we lift our eyes to the heavens with them and cry, “Why?”

And then there is another question we need to ask, “What should we do?”  What should we do when we live in a nation of people who spend a Friday night collectively wondering what it must be like for the Mama and Papa and Grandma and Grandma and big sisters and brothers of the Innocents?  How can they face Saturday?

The Church must act.  If we think God is doing nothing to stop the violence, perhaps it is because we are doing nothing when we, the Church, need to do something.  I do not know, today, what that “something” is.  But I know that God questions me, demands of me that I do something.  The battle against Evil is our battle too.  God asks, “In the name of God, what are you doing to protect tomorrow’s Innocents?” Are we willing to be the courageous Church that speaks for the One Mighty to Save, to do something that will finally “deliver calamity to the nation that has invaded us”?  We wait for God’s Advent, yes. But, perhaps God too waits for us to act, to finally do something.