Where Are You?
You probably think "Where Are You" is a person asking God where He is. Wrong!
Well - sort of wrong.
It is that. Especially in the picture.
It's intentionally misleading.
Actually, you may be surprised at the first instance of "Where are you?"
We are always asking God - "Where are You?"
We read it often enough in the Bible as well.
For instance - there's this from David -
Ps 6:1 O LORD, do not rebuke me in your anger
or discipline me in your wrath.
Ps 6:2 Be merciful to me, LORD, for I am faint;
O LORD, heal me, for my bones are in agony.
Ps 6:3 My soul is in anguish.
How long, O LORD, how long?
How long are you going to let this go on LORD?
Why aren't you doing something?
Where are you?
And it's not like David only said this kind of thing one time.
Ps 13:1 How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
Ps 13:2 How long must I wrestle with my thoughts
and every day have sorrow in my heart?
How long will my enemy triumph over me?
Ps 13:3 Look on me and answer, O LORD my God.
Give light to my eyes, or I will sleep in death;
Ps 13:4 my enemy will say, “I have overcome him,”
and my foes will rejoice when I fall.
How long - again.
Why are you hiding from me?
Why are you pretending you can't see me?
Where are you?
And there are many more Psalms with the same theme.
And the book of Habakkuk is pretty much entirely about that same theme - where are you God?
Habakkuk’s Complaint
Hab 1:2 How long, O LORD, must I call for help,
but you do not listen?
Or cry out to you, “Violence!”
but you do not save?
Hab 1:3 Why do you make me look at injustice?
Why do you tolerate wrong?
Destruction and violence are before me;
there is strife, and conflict abounds.
Hab 1:4 Therefore the law is paralyzed,
and justice never prevails.
The wicked hem in the righteous,
so that justice is perverted.
How long?
Why don't you respond?
Why don't you do something?
Where are you?
And look at what happens as a result of God not being there.
(according to Habakkuk's Complaint)
Why was God "not there"?
But let's think about these scenarios.
For David - when God "wasn't there" - it's not like David was some poor innocent soul who God just deserted.
Far from it.
There were those "little" things like the episode with Bathsheba where David was responsible for adultery, the wrongful death of a man that was incredibly loyal to David, and a child from her as well.
And for Habakkuk - look at what he was really complaining about.
The people had turned so far away from God that Habakkuk couldn't even stand to see it anymore.
One has to assume - rightly so - that God couldn't stand to see it either.
So let's look at that.
Was God really hiding?
Staying away?
"Not there"?
Or was it the other way around?
It wasn't God who wasn't there.
It wasn't God who wasn't with the people.
It was the people who weren't there with God.
And that's the whole point of the question.
I received a prompt from a software package regarding a book that I own, but haven't read yet. The book is Startling Questions, by J. C. Ryle. It was written in 1853.
The first question addressed in the book was this -
Where art Thou?
And this question had nothing to do with people asking where God was.
Where are you? - the first time it's asked in the Bible
No - this was about the very first time "Where are you?" was ever asked in the Bible.
Here's how that chapter of the book opens -
The question before your eyes is the first which God asked of man after the fall. It is the question He put to Adam in the day that he ate the forbidden fruit, and became a sinner.
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