I had forgotten how loud fireworks can be.
Sitting on the back porch at my wife’s family lake house this past weekend, I was abruptly reminded. An eruption of color and sound from just three docks down suddenly demanded our attention.
It was a surprise, even though it was the night of the Fourth of July. The official fireworks display had taken place the night before and was on the other side of the lake. This rogue enterprise drew only disgruntled shakes of heads from those gathered around, a far cry from the “Oooos” and “Aaaahs” of the previous night.
I said something sassy in what has been described as my “get-off-my-lawn” voice.
And then I remembered the sleeping children inside the house.
I shot up, pulled the screen door aside, and stumbled down the darkened hallway that led to the guest rooms. The sound of the neighbor’s celebration drowned out the screams of my eldest daughter. Boom. Blast. Fizzle. Daddy!
I finally arrived, throwing my shoulder into the old wooden door, bursting into the room. Each boom came with an accompanying flash of light, and so I caught these sporadic, shadowy glimpses of a little curly-haired girl, clutching the sheets to her face, tears rolling down her cheeks, body heaving with sobs.
“It’s okay,” I said, scooching in next to her, wrapping her in my arms. “I’m here. It’s okay.”
“Where were you?” she sputtered. “I’m so scared.”
Our life is full of these sudden, unexpected explosions of light and sound and disarray. This past year provided no shortage of examples. We’re left, like my daughter, shaking, sobbing, screaming into the dark night.
We’re left yelling at God, “Where are you? I’m so scared.” And so often, it feels as though God is still outside, still stumbling around in the darkened hallway, unable to get that door open, unable to get to us, to our needs, to our pain. Unable, unwilling.
Where are you? I’m so scared.
Isn’t that just a rereading of the Book of Lamentations? “Why have you utterly forgotten us, forsaken us for so long?” (5:20) Scripture is full of such cries, cries to God, cries of pain, cries that seemingly go unanswered.
The following night we returned to our home. My wife put my daughter in bed. “It’s nice to be in your own bed, isn’t it?” she asked. My daughter nodded.
“I’ll miss cuddling with you, though,” my wife added.
My daughter tilted her head to the side. “When did you cuddle with me?”
“All last night,” my wife said. “Don’t you remember? You were scared of the fireworks. So I stayed with you.”
“I don’t remember,” my daughter said with a shrug.
I think that’s how God works, too, desiring to draw near to us. We feel forgotten, forsaken, afraid. We feel as though God is bumbling about in the hallways of our lives, unable to hear our cries.
And yet, maybe God’s right there. Already there, amidst the hardship. The pain and fear and suffering are there, but God’s there, too, intimate and close and committed to staying with us through the night.
