God is sovereign over the whole universe, every molecule, every place and every moment. People are saying, ‘Where is God’ in these difficult times. The fact, at the same time both challenging and comforting, is that God is ‘where’ He always has been and always will be – God is there, everywhere, above all, before all, seeing all, hearing all and working always to accomplish everything He intends. He is sovereign over the whole universe and does whatever pleases Him...

Psalm 135 tells us that God – who we learn about in the Bible – is the only God (verse 5) – other ‘gods’, perhaps spiritual powers or perhaps idols and false gods invented by human imagination – are merely part of the created realm. God alone is God and is incomparable. He is great (v5), He is good (v3) and He is eternal (v13), which means He is always great and good.

Our daily experience of God lies in His being Lord of the created world (v6-7), the material and the spiritual, and all the natural events that happen over the course of time. We also experience the reality of God being Lord in the course of the history of the world as He directs events, great and small, to accomplish what He intends (v8-12). In doing whatever pleases Him in this world, He is always great and good.

And this is the challenge for us when bad things happen. Not only do people ask, where is god, but they say, if there is a god how can he be good and great? Certainly, this is a devastating challenge to the false gods and idols of human invention! But, using the undeniably bad and tragic things that happen as a reason to deny the existence of the only true God or to say He is not great or not good, makes no difference to His existence, resolves nothing for our understanding of life and is of no help to us at all. In fact, it makes matters worse, it is a pathway to despair. It leaves us with nothing helpful to say when bad things happen - we can’t even say they are truly bad if there is no basis for knowing what, by contrast, is truly good. Ultimately, we are left with no hope.

Far better to wake up to the reality that God is there, He is great and He is good. We live in a world He made and which, admittedly for reasons and in a way we cannot fully fathom, has fallen and is corrupted. The problem lies in human sin and we all face the consequences, directly and indirectly. Yet, God does whatever pleases Him and He, in His goodness, has been pleased to make for us a way of salvation. He was pleased to give His Son Jesus to save this world from sin and evil and restore good. Only the Lord God in His greatness and goodness could do this, and it is only by the life, death and resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, that this supremely good and mighty work could be accomplished. We need to turn to the great, good and eternal God. We ought to say, ‘Where is God’ out of a desire to find Him and we can find Him in Jesus Christ. To do so is to discover the good that conquers evil, to find hope that conquers despair, to get true comfort in troubling times.