I tried avoiding this piece because I simply did not have the answer. A write-up like this should provide some sort of solution, clarity and comfort to the reader; but how could I give such when I am wrapped up in my own pain and confusion? Still, this is one question, one article that I have not been able to suppress. The prompting to pick up my pen is too strong. It’s as if there is someone out there calling me to address this same thought that’s in his/her own pained heart. I hope this gets to you.

Where was God when countless lives were set on edge and overturned this year? When graves upon graves were dug? When jobs were lost and families starved? When so many were trapped in the loneliness of their houses? When others were faced with their feuding families? When peaceful protesters were killed all around the world and injustice ran high? When voices in conflict zones cried out for peace? Where was God? Where is he?

Then I heard a voice say, “Why don’t you ask me? We have a relationship”.

All this while, I never directed my question to the subject. I asked myself with tears and cried angrily to the atmosphere but never once actually asked him.

“Father, where were you in 2020?”

“I was here”. And he’s still here with us.

“Then what were you doing? Just watching with folded arms?”

“You know I wasn’t”.

Unsatisfied, a deeper question boiled out from deep within me, “Then, why do we die? We are born, we build relationships, we laugh, we cry, we suffer and are filled with so much joy. Why is all that brought to an end? Why do we die?”

In the midst of pain, I had been struggling to rise above the waters of doubt to see eternal hope. All I could see was darkness. You see, if there is eternal hope, all of what happens in life, in this world, all of 2020 would not matter. Joy awaits us for eternity. A life without this hope is pointless and hell itself.

“You are asking the wrong question. You should ask why you were born. It is in understanding how it all started that you will understand how it ends”.

“Ok, why are we born? Why were we created in the first place?”

“Why do people ever look forward to becoming parents? Why do you long to give birth to a child and create new life?”

“To have someone to love”, I said without a moment of thought or hesitation.

“Exactly”.

I smiled and almost shed tears on the dinner I was cooking. This year, for the first time ever in my life, I am genuinely looking forward to becoming a parent. I have always found it preposterous that I would care for an ungrateful, entitled human with my own sweat and blood. Now, I want to become a parent just to get a tiny glimpse of what God feels when he looks at me.

“If your beginning is to be loved, what makes you think you’ll be lost to oblivion?”

No, despite all these things, overwhelming victory is ours through Christ, who loved us. And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither our fears for today nor our worries about tomorrow—not even the powers of hell can separate us from God’s love. No power in the sky above or in the earth below—indeed, nothing in all creation will ever be able to separate us from the love of God that is revealed in Christ Jesus our Lord.
(Romans 8:37-39)