I usually sit at the front desk at the Festival Center because I love to welcome folks when they come into the building. Sometimes I also get into some really good conversations. I really wish you could sit in with me on some of the conversations, especially in the past six weeks. Even merely asking, “How are you,” is now a loaded question. Do I really want to know how they are doing? I mean, do I really want to listen?

Most days, yes, I really do. And I have heard quite a bit.

Without revealing any confidential details, one person shared their struggle about living in DC in a same-sex marriage, knowing that trump’s administration is being propelled by Christian Supremacists who wrote Project 2025 and also knowing that these same Christian Supremacists see Washington DC as a space to try out some of their worst ideas. The person I talked with knows that the end goal of all of the anti-Trans sentiment (and now actual civil rights rollback in Iowa) is to target all members of the LGBTQ community and make LGBTQ people 2nd class citizens. Is DC really a safe place for them?

Others have shared with me the tragic stories of family members or close friends who are government employees, especially USAID workers, who have unfairly and illegally lost their jobs. Some have spent decades serving – building democracy in other countries, protecting peoples’ health around the globe, helping communities recover from disaster, etc. They have very specific skills and are now looking for employment, but who hires someone to build democracies in other countries? The confusion, the hurt and rejection, and the utter chaos their lives have been thrown into is overwhelming. What happens now for them?

Since so many of our groups serve immigrant communities in various ways, I have already heard so many stories of immigrants living in sheer terror from the country in which they live in and to which they contribute so much. On two separate occasions during the early days of this administration I have spent an hour or so driving around our neighborhood after hearing a credible sighting of ICE, in order to make sure the coast is clear for immigrants to leave their homes. The terror people are living in is unbearable. How do you raise a family in the midst of state-sponsored terror?

Asking people how they are is indeed a loaded and complicated question. But it only leads to bigger and deeper questions.

And as I sit there and listen, I find myself asking, where is God in all this? I believe in a powerful God who has actively intervened in human history for redemptive ends. I believe God is both knowledgeable of and actively engaged in the macro – the social, political, economic, and cultural movements happening around the world for the purpose of bringing peace and abundance to all people. I also believe God is knowledgeable of and actively engaged in the micro of our individual lives, down to the tiniest details, wanting all people to both know and be transformed by the love of God and to be a vessel of that love to the world.

I believe that with every fiber of my being. And yet, with the cruelty and suffering being perpetrated on practically every part of the world, I am asking God more and more, “where are you?”

One passage I find myself drawn to is the first chapter of Isaiah. Isaiah does not wait long to call out the sinfulness of God’s people:

Hear the word of the Lord, you rulers of Sodom! Listen to the teaching of our God, you people of Gomorrah! What to me is the multitude of your sacrifices? says the Lord; I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed beasts; I do not delight in the blood of bulls or of lambs or of goats. When you come to appear before me, who asked this from your hand? Trample my courts no more! Bringing offerings is futile; incense is an abomination to me. New moon and Sabbath and calling of convocation—I cannot endure solemn assemblies with iniquity. Your new moons and your appointed festivals my soul hates; they have become a burden to me; I am weary of bearing them. When you stretch out your hands, I will hide my eyes from you; even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood. Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean; remove your evil deeds from before my eyes; cease to do evil; learn to do good; seek justice; rescue the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow. Come now, let us argue it out, says the Lord: if your sins are like scarlet, will they become like snow? If they are red like crimson, will they become like wool? If you are willing and obedient, you shall eat the good of the land, but if you refuse and rebel, you shall be devoured by the sword, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 1:10-20)

This comes to mind because I keep seeing those who proclaim their loyalty to Jesus so loud and proud, yet their actions look nothing like Jesus. They seem to be rejoicing in the misery and harm being caused against the LGBTQ community, against federal workers, and against immigrants. I keep wondering if God is absent because God has finally had enough of such a loud and annoying group of people. I wonder, like during the time of Isaiah, if God has shut God’s senses off from God’s people – God’s eyes (I hide my eyes from you), God’s sense of smell (incense is an abomination), God’s hearing (I will not listen to your prayers) are all closed off.

And yet, I still believe that God is intimately engaged in every facet of our lives. How can God be both present in the midst of suffering while God also shuts God’s senses off from the phony worship of her people? I don’t know. I am not God (and we are all thankful I am not!). I just have these ever-present questions.

But even as I write this, it appears to me that maybe the hope I cling to is that in listening to these stories at the front desk I share, in a very small way, the burden of the suffering being intentionally caused. Maybe those who share their stories are even just the smallest bit released from the burdens they are carrying.

I am a huge believer in taking to the streets. It is not an accident that this blog is called The Called Activist! But before we take to the streets, for our organizing, advocating, and activism to be powerful, we must first seek to be in solidarity with those directly impacted by suffering and injustice. And isn’t this the message Isaiah is giving? Isn’t Isaiah saying, your worship is phony and empty and worthless because all of your worship is bifurcated from your mistreatment of the most vulnerable? Isn’t God merely saying that loving God while hating Trans people or government workers or undocumented workers is untenable?

Worship outside of solidarity is ultimately meaningless.

All of these thoughts keep wandering through my mind. I don’t know the answers. I have questions. But I will keep listening and welcoming and wrestling with the questions. I know God is present.