Another very tough week has come my way – the part when I couldn’t finish the nursery’s 4 year old-friendly sponsor walk wins the prize for one of the worst, most humiliating moments of my life so far.  So, you can understand how the words ‘His eyes are always upon us’ were not particularly helpful.  If God could see me, why didn’t He help.  Did He just look on for some higher purpose?

No, no.  He saw a world in pain and He sent His only Son right into it.  And the answer to that ‘where was God’ cry was given.  It was terrifying.  It was heartbreaking.  It was lonely.  It was excruciatingly painful.  To say that God is just an indifferent onlooker is to deny His Son, and the cross.  He’s given His answer in person, but we keep forgetting that.  We also forget that He defeated all the terror and finality of death.  For now, sometimes, all I have is the promise of that, and I know that I need the faith to hold onto it.  This life is only an imperfect, (often very) frayed introduction to the unending, majestic story.  Sometimes, life can get better in the present.  But sometimes, all we can know is that God has the ultimate first-hand experience of what it means to suffer.  That is the answer I need to accept.  And actually, it is incontestable.