Where was God?
This sermon was preached at Evensong on Sunday 28th May, 6 days after the Manchester bombing that claimed the life of 22 people and injured many more. The New Testament reading was Ephesians 1:15-23 . Like many, if not all, of us, I have been trying to come to terms this week with the horrific actions of Monday night, when, after a pop concert at Manchester Arena, a young man, full of religious fervour, set off a bomb, killing himself and 21 other young people, and wounding many others in the area. “How can this happen?”, we ask ourselves. How does God allow it? Where is God in this awful situation? These are natural questions to ask ourselves, and ask of God. I’d go so far to state that not only are they natural, but they are necessary . Ours would be an immature faith if we did not ask; if we simply stopped our ears at the sound of the question. An immature faith ignores this issue. Not as immature and perverted a faith as one that persuades its adherents t