Where is God? This is a question that many people are asking today, and it comes with a variety of answers. Some people will say that God is dead, or God must be away because of how wicked the world is now. Some people will say that God is going to show up soon, but he is not here now. The easy way to answer this question is to point out that God is here and has never left, but many will come back and say then why has he let this happen? For many God can feel distant or feel like he does not care for them the way he does for others, but God can clearly be seen to care for his people in the Bible. God has not forgotten his people and he has not left them.
To answer this question let us look at the clearest example of someone feeling distant from God, Jesus on the cross. Read Matthew 27:45-50, and consider what Jesus was going through. He is hanging on the cross and has been for a while; from verse 45 to verse 46 is about three hours. He then cries out something that some have said is God turning his back on Jesus, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” At this point in time, Jesus is about to die on the cross, and he calls out why God has forsaken him. If you were to look at this without any other context, you would probably agree that God turned his back on Jesus, but there is more context that we can look at. Jesus is quoting Psalm 22 here, and it is obvious to the people around him that he is quoting a Messianic psalm. This would have been the point where the people who were following Jesus and thought that he was to be the king of Israel would have expected Elijah and Moses to descend and for the kingdom to be handed to Jesus. When Jesus yielded up his spirit that all crashed down.
Where was God when Jesus was on the cross, he was where he always had been, beside him. Read all of Psalm 22. The first thing that you will note is that it starts off with exactly what Jesus had said on the cross. The first 18 verses are very clearly a plea for help and a calling on God for assistance, but they do not feel that God is there. Then from verse 19 through the end of the psalm are all about how God will deliver them and will be glorified through this. When Jesus quotes this, he is not saying that God has abandoned him or turned his back on him, but that God will deliver him, and that God will be glorified through all of this!
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