Besides gun control, the other discussion that seems to be emerging from the aftermath of the deadly shootings in Connecticut last week has to do with the role of God.  Where was God, many people are asking, where was God, this allegedly great and loving God as scores of schoolchildren were being senselessly slaughtered?  What was he doing?
     Countless of well meaning people have worked themselves into various conniptions trying to answer this question.  Though their efforts are both laudable and necessary, in the end we must accept that, frustrating as it is, we will never, in this life, fully know.  We will never fully comprehend the precise measure (and depth) of the mysterious--and it is indeed unfathomably mysterious--nexus of global brokeneness, divine sovereignty and agency, and human will and sin.  Never.  Our finitude guarantees it.
     So what can we do?  We can affirm that God is loving and omnipotent, we can affirm that the world is bent and broken, we can affirm that we are confused and wayward sinners, and we can try to put these together in a meaningful way, a way that we hope will bring some clarity to our angst.  But even this will not fully satisfy.  We are still left with the lingering--and unanswerable--question:  why?  Why, God?  Why?
     But God will likely never tell us.  In the end, we are left with far more questions than answers.  And no way out.
     Except one:  Jesus Christ.  In Jesus dying on the cross, God took on all possible human suffering and pain.  All of it.  Then he overcame it.  He rose again.  The resurrection is God's answer.  The resurrection tells us that God really is omnipotent, that God really is love, that God really is hope.  The resurrection tells us that God is present, that he is working, that he cares.  It tells us that, despite what we may think today, tomorrrow, or many years from now, God knows.
     Will this always satisfy?  No.  Will it always assuage or mollify?  No.  But it gives us a reason to trust.  For if we don't trust God, we really have nothing, literally nothing, there to trust.   Nothingness will never be more than, well, nothing.  As a line from Handel's Messiah (drawn from the 19th chapter of Job) asserts, "I know that my Redeemer lives."  God is there.
     Which will you choose?