Below is an excerpt from a phone conversation with Damon Winter of the NY Times and James Estrin. The full article can be found here

There was one thing that didn’t really make pictures. It was my first night here last night. We were staying at a hotel on the edge of a pretty heavily damaged neighborhood and at night, you could hear people singing.

People are out on the street at night. It’s really hard to photograph because there’s no electricity. It’s pitch black. But all night you could hear them singing prayers. It’s pretty amazing the ways that people are dealing with this tragedy. It says a lot about the Haitian character. They are an amazing people.

As the night went on, we had earthquakes. We had a small tremor. Then, in the middle of the night, there was a really big tremor. At that point, most people had gone to sleep. It was pretty quiet out. I was lying in my bed. I couldn’t really sleep. It was so eerie because that silence was broken by screams. You could just feel it. Everyone was so scared, probably just thinking back to what had happened and reliving that moment.

You see people out on the street because they’re scared to go back into their houses at night. They’re really taking solace in each other and the company of their families and friends. It’s pretty amazing to have the strength and energy to be out singing.

PHOTO: Damen Winter, NY Times

It is during tragedy’s such as the earthquake in Haiti that Christians want to provide answers to the age-old question of “Where is God in the midst of suffering?” I have even been asked by an atheist friend, “Where is your God now?”

There are also those among us who want to judge and condemn or place blame somewhere.

But the faithfulness of God doesn’t always look like we expect it to.

In John 11, after hearing of the life-threatening illness of one of His closest friends, Jesus appears to loiter for three more frustrating days. As a result, Lazarus dies. Martha and Mary appear with the same disappointed accusation on their lips, “If you had only been here, he would not have died,” they both say. If only you had fixed things, healed him, answered our prayers.

If God cares, then he would of been there in Haiti.

But, like His Father, Jesus has come to show us that God is faithful to us in ways we never could have dreamed.

Before Jesus moves on to the tomb of his friend Lazarus to call forth the dead man from the grave, He enacts what most of us never regard as a miracle. But it may be the most miraculous miracle of the whole story. The miracle?

Jesus wept.

He showed up and entered fully and painfully into the suffering of His friends. Moments later He would indeed provide the resurrection miracle none of them could even have imagined asking for. Yet Lazarus would eventually die once more, wouldn’t he? Death would remain a reality, even as it is for us today. But what had changed forever was the image of the face of faithfulness. Not judgmental; not with anger in its eyes but rather a tear. God incarnate gave form to faithfulness.

Faithfulness was Jesus fully present.

Present in their redemption and ours.

Present in their suffering and ours.

Present in their loneliness and ours.

Acquainted with their grief and ours.

So my answer to my friends who wonder where is God in the midst of tragedy: God is in the same place he has always been . . . right beside us.

So tonight SING. Sing a prayer for Haiti. Sing a prayer of thanksgiving for God’s disturbing faithfulness.