Where is God today?

Where is God today?

When I was an undergraduate I had an electric alarm clock that never seemed to work. When there was even the tiniest of power surges, it would revert back to 12:00 and flash incessantly. Other times it would turn itself off spontaneously and the snooze button simply seemed to just turn the alarm off. And the plug didn't seem to fit into any outlet and would fall out of the wall if you breathed upon it too heavily. It's a wonder I made it through my Freshman year with the world's most unreliable timepiece as my guide.

On many days, when I look at the world, I think God possesses an alarm clock from the same company that made the one I had in school. I believe, during the relatively quiet year of 1707, he set his alarm for 200 years, anticipating a wake-up in 1907, ready to get up and at it to face the challenges of the 20th Century. But, poor God, with that same crappy brand of clock I had, has overslept and much has happened since that 1907 wake-up we've all been expecting. What better reason could explain World War I, the Holocaust, fifty different genocides, and countless famines, just to name the highlights? 

Today as I walked along the streets of Bishkek, shopping, enjoying unseasonably warm weather, I was successfully managing to keep the events of the past week out of my mind, when suddenly I encountered a beggar sitting on the sidewalk as I waited for the light to change. This was no ordinary beggar, but instead was one of the saddest people I have ever seen. It appeared he had either lost a fight with the baddest UFC fighter on the planet or had been run over by a cement truck. His clothes were torn, cuts and bruises encrusted his body. I could see his blood dried on his knee through the giant hole in his pants. He spoke to me in Russian asking me for money. And the first thing I asked myself was "Where is God today?"

I tried to fish some coins out of my pocket, but all I had was a One Som coin, worth about a penny. Crap. The only other money I had in my pocket were really large bills. Then the light changed back to red and I had to wait for the light again. And I was late to get to a store I wanted to visit before it closed. I was about to hand him the One Som coin, when I realized that it's really more insulting to give a person such a small pittance than it is to give them nothing at all. It feels like giving a person One Som is like taunting them or spitting at them in contempt. 

I stood and looked at the man, deeply into his eyes. Damn the light turned red again. All I really wanted to do was just cross the street. Exasperated, I pulled a 500 Som bill out of my pocket and handed it to him. I might have detected a small flicker brighten his eyes as he said three or four sentences to me. I wish I could have said something more meaningful to him than "good-bye." Oh no! The light turned red again. Oh well, what can one do?

Please do not operate under the impression that I am a good person. If I were I would have given him all the bills in my pocket and would have tried to find a place where he could have had his wounds cleaned and tended. No, my complete lack of skill in Russian is not an excuse for my inaction. And as an even worse reflection of my character, I do admit, for a second, I did calculate how that 500 soms could purchase two weeks of my blood pressure medication (which I am in much more dire need of since Tuesday) or even six delicious Perfection 80% Cocoa chocolate bars, my favorite chocolate in Kyrgyzstan. 

Where is God today? After I finally crossed the street I realized that the problem with God is not His alarm clock. It is actually a problem with bicycles. If there is a God, maybe He/She/It is not sleeping after all. Maybe what has happened is that the Supreme Being has decided that after centuries and centuries of providing humans with prophets and messiahs and holy texts galore, that it's time to take the training wheels off and let us humans ride the bicycle of destiny for ourselves and learn to properly use that gift of free will we've been given. Sadly, like the small child riding a bike without training wheels for the first time, we all expect the hand of someone more powerful to control our ride and keep us from crashing. But one will never learn to ride a bicycle correctly if one always expects a guiding hand.

Where is God today? If the Kingdom of God is to appear it will not come from the skies or fall from the heavens. The Kingdom of God will come only if it is present in all our hearts and manifests itself in each of our little daily actions; bringing the Kingdom of God to Earth is OUR responsibility. The Kingdom of God will come when we bring it to the planet by taking good care of every person in the world.

We cannot wait for God's alarm to go off, as who knows when that will happen. Instead, the training wheels are off and we must pedal as hard and as fast as we can, whether we are Buddhist or Christian or Muslim or Hindu or Jew, or lapsed-Lutheran agnostic. We must ride with the message of love toward one another, kindness towards all who are different than ourselves, and assistance to all in need, while resisting the messengers of greed and hatred. And we must ride no matter the risk of crashing into the ditch and despite the peril we face from our adversaries chasing us on Harleys.

Where is God today? He is the man I met on a street corner in Bishkek. And God is also in our hands.