When, in the Franco Zeffirelli movie Jesus of Nazereth, Joseph (Jesus' father) dies, his now widowed wife Mary, who had been sitting by her husband's bedside as he passed away, turns her eyes upward and prays Deuteronomy 6:4.  "Hear O Israel," she says, "the Lord your God, He is one."
     These words are, for Mary, the supreme expression of her faith.  Did they bring Joseph back?  Of course not.  Will they make Mary's way any smoother?  Maybe, maybe not.  But that's not the point.  In saying these words, Mary is telling God that despite the immense loss she has just experienced, she will continue to believe in him.  Despite this onslaught of pain and sorrow, Mary will continue to believe that God is there, and that, regardless of what has happened, she will believe that he is full, perfect, and good.  While Mary knows full well that reciting these words will not change her situation, she knows just as well that in saying them she is proclaiming that over and above all earthly hardship and pain, there is a God who, somehow, some way, understands, a God who, somehow, some way, infuses her existence, the days and years of her earthly sojourn, however painful they are at this moment, with meaning and purpose, fills them with a meaning and purpose that exceeds all others, a meaning and purpose grounded in a love that exceeds all  form and imagination.
     Above all, Mary is telling God that she believes that she is living not in a cold and disconnected world, a world shorn of all heart and feeling, but in a world that overflows with life, justice, and compassion. Why?  Because, she believes, there is a God who, in an act of profound and enduring love, has created it.
     For Mary is acutely aware that her only other option is to forever wonder why she is even here, why she even lives, thrust (or, to use Martin Heidegger's term, "thrown") into a world whose meaning and purpose she will never, ever fathom to the day she herself dies (for without God it has ultimately none), a life lived, loved, and lost, never to be found and loved again.
     If God is not there, what is?