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Friday, May 14, 2010 Where is God?I would like to share an account by Nobel laureate, Elie Wiesel that I found inspiring and hair-raising. I am unable to explain the effect it had on me and I leave it to my readers to feel for themselves.  Wiesel was a prisoner in his adolescence and he survived four different concentration camps during World War II. However, he lost his parents and youngest sister while he was transported to another camp. He reconciled later with his two other sisters. I shall write as it is adapted in the book: Author's (Beth M. Erikson) script: Rather than trying to control God or becoming cynical because of the events he witnessed daily as a young boy in the camps, he chose to believe, as I now do, that God suffers when people suffer. In that sense, people do not need to wait for their "final reward" to experience the presence of God. In his autobiographical account of life and death in prisons, Wiesel wrote of his conclusion, eloquently voicing the anguish of millions who grieve over or rail about the seeming absence of God in the Holocaust. Elie Wiesel's account: One day when we came back from work, we saw three gallows rearing up in the assembly place. Three victims in chains - and one of them the little servant, the sad-eyed angel. Three victims were mounted together onto chairs. The three necks were placed at the same moment within nooses. At a sign, the three chairs tipped over. Total silence throughout the camp. Then the march past began. The two adults were no longer alive. But the third rope was still moving: being so light, the child was still alive. For more than half an hour he stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. Behind me I heard a man asking: "Where is God now?" and I heard a voice within me answer him: "Where is God?" Here - God is hanging here on this gallows. Labels: Adapted from Longing for Dad - Father Loss and its Impact |
