God Who Risks

I remember reading in Night, a book by Elie Wiesel, his description of a tragic scene. The setting is a Nazi concentration camp. There is a ten-year-old boy hanging, dying on a gallows. There are others dying there too. A gathering of prisoners watches. One asks another, “Where is God?” The other answers somewhat like this, looking at the boy, “God is there, hanging.”

I remember a very recent picture. A little girl lying in the street, dying alone of Ebola. A crowd stands at a distance, lest the deadly virus infect them too. At this point I will imagine one person in the crowd whispering the question, “Where is God?” Soon a man crosses the street. He sits beside the child and lifts her onto his lap. Weakly she stretches an arm and rests her hand on his chest as he rocks her gently, singing softly. When she dies, he cries. The crowd cries, and the one who wondered, whispers, “There is God.”

I wonder, Is God to be found in the calling of one in need to the one who acts and risks?