Where Is God In A Coronavirus World? is the title of a booklet written by by John C. Lennox. It embraces a question on many lips during times of personal or national tragedy. Where is God in all this? It may come mockingly from someone who is not really interested in an answer. A colleague was making his way to his church to conduct the funeral of a young man who had drowned in a boating accident. He passed a man who said to him: ‘On you way to make excuses for God?’
But if we are honest we have to admit that sometimes the question arises within ourselves. John Taylor Smith was an Anglican bishop in the early part of the twentieth century. When he was faced with a setback or challenge in his life he would ask himself: ‘How does this fit into Romans 8: 28?’ This is the probably one of the most challenging verses in the Bible: ‘We know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.‘ I’ve put ‘in all things’ in bold because this is the challenge. God is working in all things for our good? Even in these Covid-19 days?
If questions like that have been troubling you then you have a lot in common with many Bible people. Psalm 137 arises from the experience of God’s people in exile. The Babylonians have invaded Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, perpetrated atrocities and taken the vast bulk of the population captive. There are times when their distance from the land given to them by God and the Temple where they worshipped Him causes deep spiritual disturbance. It is difficult to sing ‘songs of joy’. In the Psalm we see they have have packed away their harps, hung them on the branches of trees. And it’s made worse by the local inhabitants who pile on the pain: ‘Where are all your songs of joy? Have the chosen people nothing to sing about?’
However even as they ask themselves the painful questions God’s people find a way forward:
‘If I forget you, Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you, if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.’ (vv. 5-6)
This is a commitment never to forget their past experiences in the faith and the joy they experienced in the blessings that flowed from God. They were part of a community of faith that celebrated the reality of God in their midst.
They also placed their trust in the justice of God that the day would come when those who had worked evil against Israel, the Edomites as well as the Babylonians, would experience the weight of God’s judgement upon them. We may baulk at the way this is expressed in verses 8-9 but in the raw pain of his experience the Psalmist is confident that an appropriate judgement will fall on the enemies of God’s people.
So where do we stand in relation to this ancient text? We are not a people in exile but it might often seem that way. We are cut off from our places of worship and although we have ways of sustaining fellowship there is still a longing to gather once again under the Word, united in prayer and expressing our faith in song. This is where we can take a lead from the ancient people of God in exile. They were committed to remembering the blessings they had known in the worship of their community and the reality of God in their midst. This was not just nostalgia. The very fact that they continue to worship in Babylon and to raise their voices in prayer shows that they believed that the reality of God could still be experienced in exile. Remembrance of the past led to present experience. He was present to forgive, renew and reassure.
But He was not just a God who delivered warm, fuzzy experiences to individual believers. This exiled people believed in a God who was ‘marching on’, whose justice would not sleep forever, who would ultimately act for His people. We are similarly assured that God is a dynamic presence in our midst, that He has promised to push back the darkness in human experience, that His Kingdom will in the end be established forever. One of my memories of the community of faith on this Lord’s Day is when we sang the hymn: ‘Through the love of God our Saviour all will be well.‘ Remember the final verse:
‘We expect a bright tomorrow;
all will be well;
faith can sing through days of sorrow,
‘All, all is well.’
On our Father’s love relying,
Jesus every need supplying,
or in living or in dying,
all must be well.’
This is not faith of ‘the everything always turns out well in the end’ variety but faith in the promises of the God revealed in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. He blessed the Apostle John with a vision which has sustained the whole Church through the millennia:
‘Then I saw “a new heaven and a new earth,” for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea. I saw the Holy City, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Look! God’s dwelling place is now among the people, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. ‘He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death’ or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21: 1-4)
