Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. 

- Job 38.4

"Where was God?"

It's a common and serious question for people of faith: Where was God when my child died? Where was God when terrorists bombed a Coptic Christian church in Egypt on Palm Sunday of 2017? Where was God when a tsunami engulfed the Sunda Strait in Indonesia and left fourteen thousand corpses bobbing in its backwash? 

Where was God?

It it, as I say, a common question and a serious one. Christians must face the problem of evil in the light of a God whom Scripture reveals as both all-powerful and all-loving. (Atheists have their own problem: They must deal with the problem of good. If there is no God, why prefer good to evil? How can one even define the difference? And why should good happen instead of evil?)

Gifted apologists have offered valid responses, but no answer ultimately satisfies. Take the case of Job: Yes, the Almighty eventually cuts the patriarch in for double-coupon days and wins a side-bet with Satan in the process, but that doesn't help much if you're one of Job's original ten offspring who perished in a freak tornado. (Or Mrs. Job, who, one presumes, had to go through an additional ten sessions of labor just to break even.) 

"Where was God?"

God never answers that question, the sum of all of Job's anguished inquiries into the chaos his life had become. Instead, the Lord upends the query and asks the same question of his servant: Where were you? "I've been at this God-thing for a long time, Job; indeed, for longer than time. I've kept the world between the ditches up to this point without any help from you. Where were you?"

It's an uncommon question, but a serious one. I want to ask where God was when something bad happened to me. God might want to ask me where I was when the same thing, and far worse things, happened to people all around the world, and all around me, every day of my life. Where was God? Well, being omnipresent, he was there, which is more than God can say for me.

A new year lies ahead. Predictions are perilous but there is at least one we can make with confidence. When a reporter asked the great capitalist J. P. Morgan for his forecast on the stock market the wily plutocrat opined, "Prices will fluctuate." My prognostication for 2019 is that outcomes will fluctuate: There will be plenty of great moments, and plenty of "Where was God?" moments. 

When tempted to ask, "Where was God?" I think I may resort to Job 38.4. Where was I? Where am I? Where am I willing to be? And I think that when I get there, I'll find God has been waiting for me all along.