God Is Here with Us
John 1:1-18
Illustration
by Elie Wiesel

In his book NIGHT, Elie Wiesel wrote of the year he spent in Auschwitz, where both his parents and his sister died and where he witnessed unspeakable horrors. He told of one terrible evening when the whole camp was forced to witness the hanging of three prisoners. One of them was just a child whose crime was stealing bread. Wiesel said the boy had the face of a sad angel. When the three victims were being prepared for execution, a man behind Wiesel asked, "Where is God?" As the whole camp was forced to march past the gallows where the two adults were no longer alive, but the boy was still dying, Wiesel heard the same man behind him asking, "Where is God now?" Ellie Wiesel said he heard a voice in himself answer him, "Where is God? God is here, hanging on this gallows...." (Wiesel, Ellie, Night, Bantam Books, pg. 61-62)

The incarnate God in Christ, who himself died an ignominious death on a cross, is always with us. He does not leave us alone in life or in death, in the best or the worst times. God shows up at the strangest times and in the strangest people.

from Night, adapted by, by Elie Wiesel