From Why to What to Where?

a meditation by Carrie Eikler
Part of our prayer service for those affected by the natural disasters in Myanmar and China

A couple of months ago, my mother called me in the morning with some shocking news. On their quiet farm in fertile lands of Central Illinois, they woke up to the bed shaking…the room shaking…the ground shaking. My brother felt it in Chicago, too. Deep beneath the earth in southern Indiana, an earthquake began that was felt throughout the surrounding states. That Sunday, I stood up in this congregation during our joys and concerns and I remember giving thanks that no one was hurt, and giving thanks that earth sometimes reminds us that she is alive, and unpredictable, in ways that shake us up, but do no human harm.

But then three weeks ago, on May 2nd, we hear of the deadly cyclone that ripped through Myanmar, the country formerly known as Burma. Numbers begin trickling in on the dead and wounded. Then the numbers came pouring in. According to the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, official government sources are reporting 78,000 people dead, 56,000 people missing, and UN numbers estimate that 2.4 million people were affected by the cyclone. To make matters worse, international aid communities have been running up against resistance from Myanmar’s military regime, making the distribution of aid slow and arduous. And as if to add insult to injury, the cyclone comes immediately before what is known as “hungry season” in Myanmar, the time between May and November when the rice surplus is at its lowest, and before the year’s yield comes in.

On May 12th, an earthquake reading 7.2 on the Richter Scale, shook the Sichuan province in Southwest China. Upwards around 10,000 people are believed to have perished in the quake. Those who have survived, whether or not their homes were destroyed, are sleeping on the streets, because reports of possible aftershocks have left people terrified of being indoors.

In light of these events, I found it much more difficult to read the text for this week from Isaiah. Depicting the people of Israel as oblivious to God’s care, they believe that God has forsaken and forgotten them. But God speaks as a mother, saying ‘Can a woman forget her nursing child, or show no compassion for the child in her womb?...I will not forget you.” I find this to be a beautiful image, being a mother myself. But if God does not forget, then why? Why do these things happen? And not just these isolated incidences, but why tsunamis, hurricanes, why do babies die, and tyrants prosper? It opens the flood gates for asking why these happen, which naturally lead us into asking why did God make this happen, or at least “allow” this to happen?

Some of us have clear answers on these big questions of God’s place in human suffering. Some of us would rather move from the question of “why?” to asking the question “what?”: What are we to do about it? What can be done? What were the circumstances that made a bad situation worse, and what should have happened? Generally, I feel more comfortable in this territory. It’s easier for me to think about active responses. But I think when I jump too quickly from “why” into “what,” I feel like we disregard the questions that we all are feeling. It’s like sitting with someone who has lost their loved one, and immediately trying to fix the problem. I remember reading in seminary about being with people during times of crisis and death. The author, whose teenage son was killed during a robbery, reflected on his experience and other stories he heard about people who suffer devastating loss. He said that when people ask the question “Why?”—Why did my son die? Why did this happen to our family?—we really weren’t looking for the answer, as if a single answer could exist. We were just needing to voice the question as a way of getting our minds around the reality of what happened.

Of course there are simple things we can and should do in the immediate time after a devastation, if only give money, but we miss something if we don’t ask these questions. Even if our questions seem so far from what we generally think about God and suffering, it can only enhance our relationship with God, and possibly prepare us more fully to be the servants we are called to be. If we took quickly jump from why to what, we don’t give ourselves time to pray, to be angry, to dialogue with God and each other, simply to grieve. It quickly helps us move over the hard question of God’s presence in the disaster.

And it is dwelling with the question of “where,” of asking about God’s presence, that I have found to be most helpful. While I will ask “why” these things happen, and “what” can I do to help the situation, I have a meeting place by asking “where” is God in these circumstances, in these tragedies.