There are some Christian questions that sound simple until they become personal.

One of them is: Where was God in that?

People ask it after suffering, loss, trauma, disappointment or unanswered prayer. They ask it after a diagnosis. They ask it after an accident. They ask it when something happens that does not seem to fit with what they believe about a loving, powerful and present God.

I understand why the question matters. I also find it difficult to answer.

Part of that is because I have an analytical, science and maths-oriented mind. I tend to look for patterns, evidence, causes and conclusions. If someone asks me where God was in a situation, my instinct is to want an answer that can be tested, traced or at least explained with some clarity.

But life with disability does not always provide that kind of clarity.

Where is God in my disability? I do not always know. Sometimes I can look back and see ways God has shaped my character, opened doors, deepened compassion or redirected my life. Other times I wonder whether I am seeing God’s hand or simply creating meaning because I want the story to make sense.

That uncertainty is not faithlessness. It may be part of honest faith.

Why the Question Is So Hard

“Where was God in that?” is hard because it is really several questions at once.

It can mean:

  • Did God cause this?
  • Did God allow this?
  • Did God have a purpose in this?
  • Was God absent?
  • Was God with me even though I could not see him?
  • Can anything good come from this?
  • Am I supposed to learn something?
  • Is this suffering meaningful or just painful?

Those questions should not be answered too quickly.

Christians sometimes rush to make suffering meaningful. We say things like “everything happens for a reason” or “God must have needed to teach you something.” The problem is that these statements can turn pain into a puzzle and God into the one who set the trap.

The Bible is more honest than that.

Job’s friends thought they could explain Job’s suffering. They were confident that suffering must have a simple moral cause. Job must have sinned. God must be correcting him. The equation was neat: righteousness produces blessing, sin produces suffering.

But the book of Job refuses that tidy explanation.

Job does not receive a full answer to the mechanics of his suffering. He encounters God, but he is not handed a spreadsheet of reasons. The story does not tell us that every sufferer will understand why suffering happened. It tells us that God is greater than Job’s understanding, but it also rebukes the friends who claimed to understand too much.

That matters.

Sometimes the most faithful thing we can say is not “I know exactly why this happened,” but “I do not know, but I am still bringing the question before God.”

The Difference Between Explanation and Presence

When we ask where God was, we often want an explanation. But Scripture often gives us something deeper and more difficult: God’s presence.

The Psalms are full of people who cannot make sense of their circumstances. They cry out, complain, remember, question and wait. Psalm 22 begins with the words Jesus later takes on his own lips: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” That is not a tidy theological statement. It is lament.

Lament is important because it gives faithful language to unresolved pain.

It allows us to say:

  • This hurts.
  • This feels wrong.
  • I do not understand.
  • God, where are you?
  • I still bring this to you.

Lament does not require us to pretend. It does not demand that we rename suffering as blessing before we have even grieved it. It teaches us that confusion can still be prayer.

For someone like me, this is both helpful and frustrating. I want answers. Lament gives me honesty. I want neat conclusions. Lament gives me relationship. I want to solve the equation. Lament teaches me to stay in the conversation.

That may be one of the ways God meets analytical people. Not by giving us every answer we want, but by refusing to let our unanswered questions become a reason to stop praying.

Where Is God in Disability?

When I ask where God is in my disability, I have to resist two errors.

The first error is to treat disability only as tragedy. In that view, disability is simply a problem to be fixed, a defect to be overcome or a burden to explain. If that is the only lens, then disabled people easily become objects of pity, healing projects or illustrations in someone else’s sermon.

The second error is to romanticise disability. In that view, disability is spoken of as though it is automatically beautiful, spiritually superior or a special gift. That can also be unhelpful. It may sound affirming, but it can minimise the real frustration, pain, limitation, exclusion and practical difficulty that disability can involve.

A better approach is more honest.

My disability is part of my embodied life in a world that is both created good and still waiting for redemption. It is not the whole of who I am. It is not proof that God is absent. It is not something I need to pretend is easy. It is also not something that prevents me from bearing God’s image, serving others or belonging fully in the body of Christ.

Where is God in that?

Perhaps God is not found in a single explanation. Perhaps God is found in several places.

God is present in the truth that my worth is not measured by physical ability. God is present in the community that makes room rather than merely making allowances. God is present in the stubborn hope that resurrection is bodily, not an escape from embodiment. God is present in the conviction that weakness does not disqualify a person from ministry. God is present in Christ, who knows human vulnerability from the inside.

That does not answer every question. But it does reframe the question.

Instead of asking only, “Why did God make or allow this?” I can also ask, “How is God meeting me, forming me and calling the church to become more faithful here?”

Am I Hearing God or Just My Own Thoughts?

This is another difficult question.

When I think I have found meaning in something, how do I know it is God and not just my own mind connecting dots?

That is a very fair question, especially for analytical people. We know humans are pattern-making creatures. We can see meaning where there may only be coincidence. We can baptise our preferences and call them God’s leading. We can interpret events in ways that comfort us but may not be true.

So discernment matters.

I do not think every impression should be treated as divine revelation. Nor do I think every meaningful reflection should be dismissed as imagination. The Christian life involves wisdom, Scripture, prayer, community and humility.

A possible test is to ask:

  • Is this consistent with Scripture?
  • Does this draw me toward love of God and neighbour?
  • Does this produce humility rather than superiority?
  • Does this make me more truthful, patient and faithful?
  • Would wise Christians who know me recognise this as spiritually healthy?
  • Am I forcing an answer because silence feels unbearable?

That last question is important.

Sometimes we want meaning so badly that we rush to name it. But faith does not require us to overinterpret every event. We can say, “This may be one way God is using this, but I hold that carefully.” We can also say, “I do not know yet.”

Those are faithful sentences.

God’s Presence Is Clearest in Christ

For Christians, the deepest answer to “Where was God in that?” is not an abstract theory. It is Jesus.

The cross does not explain every instance of suffering as if each pain has a neat footnote. But it does show us that God is not distant from suffering. In Christ, God enters the vulnerability, injustice, pain and death of the world. Jesus does not observe suffering from a safe distance. He bears it.

That does not make suffering good. The cross was evil, unjust and violent. Yet God worked through it for redemption.

This matters because Christians do not believe in a God who avoids the wounded places of the world. We believe in a crucified and risen Lord. God’s answer to suffering is not merely explanation. It is incarnation, cross and resurrection.

That means when I cannot see where God is in my disability, I can still look to Christ and say: God is not absent from embodied weakness. God is not embarrassed by vulnerability. God is not waiting until I become less limited before he can be present or useful.

The risen Jesus still bears wounds. That does not answer every question about disability, but it does prevent us from imagining that healed glory means God simply erases the story of embodied suffering as though it never mattered.

A More Honest Way to Speak

Christians should be careful when helping others interpret suffering. We may want to say something meaningful, but not every meaningful-sounding sentence is helpful.

Instead of saying:

God did this so that you could learn something.

It may be better to say:

I do not know why this happened, but I believe God is with you in it.

Instead of saying:

One day you will see the reason.

It may be better to say:

One day Christ will make all things new, even the things we cannot explain now.

Instead of saying:

Your disability is your special calling.

It may be better to say:

Your disability is part of your story, but your calling is rooted in Christ, not in being useful as an example to others.

Instead of saying:

God never gives you more than you can handle.

It may be better to say:

Some things are more than we can handle alone, and that is why we need God and one another.

This kind of language is less tidy, but more truthful.

A Framework for Analytical Christians

For people who think analytically, it may help to separate different levels of certainty.

There are things I can know with strong Christian confidence:

  • God is good.
  • God is present.
  • God is revealed in Jesus.
  • Human beings bear God’s image.
  • Suffering is not the final word.
  • Resurrection hope is bodily.
  • The church is called to love, include and honour every member.

There are things I may be able to discern carefully:

  • God may be forming patience, compassion or dependence in me.
  • God may use my experience to help others.
  • God may open ministry opportunities through my story.
  • God may expose weaknesses in the church through disabled experience.

There are things I should hold loosely:

  • This specific event happened because God wanted this specific outcome.
  • I know exactly why God allowed this.
  • This suffering is mainly about teaching me one lesson.
  • I can confidently map God’s hidden purposes.

That distinction helps me.

It allows me to be spiritually open without becoming speculative. It allows me to see possible meaning without pretending to have total certainty. It allows me to say, “I think God may be at work here,” without turning that into “I know exactly what God is doing.”

The Church as Part of the Answer

Sometimes the question “Where was God?” should lead the church to ask, “Where were we?”

If a disabled person feels excluded, forgotten or reduced to a prayer request, the answer is not only theological. It is communal. God often makes his care visible through the body of Christ. When the church fails to make room, the absence people feel may not be God’s absence, but the church’s failure to embody God’s welcome.

That is confronting, but necessary.

The body of Christ is meant to be a place where the weaker members are treated as indispensable, not optional. If people with disabilities are missing from leadership, planning, preaching, pastoral care, theology and decision-making, then the church’s witness is incomplete.

In that sense, one answer to “Where is God in disability?” is: God is calling the church to become more like Christ.

Faith Without Forced Certainty

I would like to have cleaner answers.

I would like to be able to say exactly where God was in every hard moment of my life. I would like to know which insights are God’s leading and which are simply my own mind trying to make sense of things. I would like faith to feel less like trust and more like proof.

But maybe mature faith does not always mean having more certainty about God’s hidden purposes. Maybe it means learning to trust God’s revealed character when his hidden purposes remain unclear.

For me, that means I can say:

I do not always know where God is in my disability.
I do not always know whether I am interpreting things correctly.
I do not want to force meaning onto pain.
I do not want to deny the ways God has used my story.
I do not want to confuse unanswered questions with God’s absence.

That is not a complete answer. But it may be an honest Christian one.

Conclusion: God Is Not Reduced to the Explanation

“Where was God in that?” is not a question we should dismiss. It is often the cry of someone trying to hold faith and pain together.

But we should not assume the answer must always be a clear explanation. Sometimes God is found in lament. Sometimes in endurance. Sometimes in community. Sometimes in the refusal to let suffering define our worth. Sometimes in the wounded and risen Christ. Sometimes in the slow work of becoming more truthful, compassionate and dependent.

And sometimes, we simply do not know.

For analytical Christians, that can be hard. But not knowing everything does not mean knowing nothing. We may not know exactly why something happened. We may not know precisely how God is using it. We may not know whether every insight we have is divine guidance or human reflection.

But we can know where to look.

We look to Christ.
We look to Scripture.
We look to the Spirit’s quiet work.
We look to wise community.
We look to the hope of resurrection.
We look for love, truth, humility and faithfulness.

God is not reduced to the explanation. God is the one who meets us when the explanation is incomplete.

Sources and Further Reading

  • C. S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain.
  • C. S. Lewis, A Grief Observed.
  • N. T. Wright, Evil and the Justice of God.
  • John Swinton, Becoming Friends of Time: Disability, Timefullness, and Gentle Discipleship.
  • John Swinton, Raging with Compassion: Pastoral Responses to the Problem of Evil.
  • Nancy L. Eiesland, The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability.
  • Thomas E. Reynolds, Vulnerable Communion: A Theology of Disability and Hospitality.
  • Amos Yong, The Bible, Disability, and the Church: A New Vision of the People of God.
  • Kate Bowler, Everything Happens for a Reason: And Other Lies I’ve Loved.
  • The books of Job, Psalms, John, Romans, 1 Corinthians and Revelation.

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