Where is God?  In the aftermath of the recent bombings in Boston, countless people have asked this question--and countless people have tried to answer it.  Two answers come very easily; one, God was never there, anyway; and two, God has always been here, regardless.
     Emotionally, neither answer is wholly satisfactory.  If God was never there to begin with, we have nowhere to go but ourselves to find hope and meaning in this tragedy.  For many of us, this works, though we are always left wondering:  why?  Why this?  Why now?  Yes, the world is unpredictable, yes, life is capricious; yet this doesn't necessarily make accepting things any easier.
     On the other hand, if God has always been here, we have somewhere else to go, beyond ourselves, for hope and meaning.  But if we do this, we are still left with the same question:  why?  Why, God?  Why, now?  What were you thinking?
     Unfortunately, we will never know, at least in this life.  As I write today, three people are now dead and many more are maimed for life.  Why?
     I struggle with this as much as anyone.  Though I can say that we live in a fallen and bent world, and though I can say that, in Jesus, God took on all the world's suffering, past, present, and future, redeeming it for all time, I am still left wondering:  why?
     Hard as it is, what I finally will do is trust, trust God.  Trust God that the world and its foibles are larger than I think, trust God that he is bigger than I imagine, trust God that, as Ecclesiastes puts it, God is heaven and I am on earth, trust God that his wisdom exceeds my own:  trust God that he is God.
     Is this easy?  Definitely not.  As philosopher Soren Kierkegaard observed, however, if faith is humanly possible and understandable, it would not ask us to do impossible things.
     Take a step into the unknown.