Where is God?

by Sister Pamela Hussey

A recent article in The Tablet (God's Longing to be Human by Daniel O'Leary, 17/24 December 2005) tells of a child and her father standing in front of the crib. The child is heard musing: 'I wonder if God enjoys being a baby.'

'Could it be…' asks Daniel O'Leary, 'that God created the world in the first place because of a burning desire to be exactly like one of us, and so, to experience everything that human beings experience?' Perhaps that is itself the answer to the anguished question: 'Where was God?' which rises from so many hearts and minds in the face of human tragedy and natural disaster. God was there. God was in the human experience.  

John, the disciple who Jesus loved, tells us in the Prologue to his Gospel: 'And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth' (John 1:14). A child's musing simplifies that immense theological proclamation: 'I wonder if God enjoys being a baby.'

God has become vulnerable in this baby - and we are not used to that idea. The all-powerful Creator of heaven and earth cannot even stand up. There is a contradiction here that we can scarcely begin to resolve. Could it be that the Creator is not, in fact, all-powerful? That is the conclusion of the German philosopher Hans Jonas in his book The Concept of God after Auschwitz. A Jewish voice. God has gifted us with free will, he has made us participants in creation, in the evolution of the universe towards the Kingdom of justice, love and peace for which he has destined it. We are free to participate or not.  

Life is rich in new beginnings, new possibilities, new resolutions, and never more so than at the beginning of a New Year. As we contemplate the baby in the crib, the Word made flesh, the one who is going to show us what it means to be truly human, we can reflect on how we are going to use the freedom and the power that has been given us to bring about the Kingdom of justice, love and peace that he came to establish.