when we see all the sadness and struggle in the world we need to ask a very simple but clarifying question. “Where is the voice of God in all of this?”
I think it’s too easy to think apocalyptically about the world we live in because it allows us to give up on everything and hope that we’re going to be lucky enough to hide, or be taken away, from the world. We may even relish the idea that God will settle accounts, vindicate us, and destroy evil and evil doers. It also a ring of truth to it because we do believe, as Christians, that there will be a day when God will establish perfect justice and renew a broken world.
Yet could it also be true that the sin, struggle, and just plain craziness we see in the world has within it a still small voice that too often gets unheard because we’re focusing on the storm? Could it be, for example, that God is trying to tell us, that the chaos and troubles of the world as we experience it are actually indicators for where we, as the people of God, need to be active and encountering the world? When a person is in pain we ask them where that pain is in order to help them become whole. Could it also be that what we see around us are the cries of a world in pain and we need to listen to them so we know where the hurt is and make healing possible?
Regardless, if we presume that God is the God of history should we not at least not give in to panic as we see the world around us but rather to look to see where God is in all of this? At the least we could learn from St. Peter and realize that if our eye is only on the storm around us, and not on the Master of the wind and the waves, that we will almost certainly sink.
The Beautiful Path 