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July 28, 2008
Where Is God?
by Diane Brown
As with a sword in my bones, mine enemies reproach me; while they say daily unto me, Where is thy God? (Psalm 42:10)
During a recent family vacation we visited an air force museum. Each enormous hanger represented a different time period from the Wright brothers to the Cold War. As I walked through a section that represented the holocaust during WWII, I saw a quilt on the wall. It was not a lovely quilt at all, and I was overwhelmed by sadness as I surveyed each square. Some squares had pictures of doom and death, and other squares had words such as ÒWhere is God?Ó Surely the makers of the quilt, apparently unbelievers, had no idea of what GodÕs Word said about expecting hard times and wars.
Joshua, who was well acquainted with times of war, tells us the answer to the question, Where is God? Joshua knew that understanding that God was with him required his knowledge of the Word:
This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night . . . . Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed; for the Lord thy God is with thee wherever thou goest (Joshua 1:8-9).
As I passed on through the museum, the messages from the quilt continued to disturb my thoughts until I came upon a showcase with a little book and a few other artifacts from a prisoner of war in Korea . Here at last was someone who knew the answer to the question, Where is God? In the little book, he wrote what he could remember from the Bible, and doing this gave him strength for each day as he sat in his cold, bleak cell. This man most likely a believer had enough knowledge of the Word to help him know that God was right there with him in the cell.
The Lord challenged me at this point. Do I have enough knowledge of the Word that, under the same circumstances, with no Bible, I too would not despair and could answer clearly the question that Joshua and the Korean prisoner did? Where is God?
If I take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me
(Psalm 139:9-10).