- Elie Wiesel is a Nobel prize winner and survivor of the Holocaust. He tells of a time when he was forced to watch the hanging of two Jewish man and a Jewish boy. The two men died almost instantly, but for some reason the
boy struggled on the gallows for almost half an hour.
As Wiesel and others stood watching this boy die an agonizing death someone behind him muttered " Where is God?".
"Where is he?" again in anguish the voice muttered " Where is he? "
Weisel was struggling with the same question. Then he heard a voice within him saying "He is hanging there on the gallows."
Faced with suffering that defies explanation or reason we cry " Where is God?" It is a cry of the tortured heart.
Good Friday will never answer the 'why' of suffering. But it does tell us one thing God is not removed from our suffering. He dose not watch as an impartial bystander in our lives. He feels our pain because he suffered also.
On the cross Jesus/ God took on board every tragedy, every injustice, every hideous rape, murder, abuse and torture. The world has ever seen or felt. The pain and shame and guilt of it all becomes his.
Today Jesus/ God continues to suffer, just as a parent suffers as they watch their children go astray, and wreck their lives. So, also Jesus/God suffers as he watches us in our wretchedness. He suffers as we choose ways that bring us pain. He suffers the agony of rejection and misunderstanding as we ignore and insult him despite his love for us.
To claim God does not understand the cry of our hearts is the ultimate insult to him. No lesser god, no other god has suffered as he did suffer on Calvary.