Dorothy Soelle’s essay pulls from a passage in Elie Weisel’s seminal work Night. Weisel writes from his personal experience in Auschwitz and Soelle draws upon his reflections. The central passage from Weisel that guides Soelle’s thoughts is his memory of a hanging in the concentrations camp at the hands of the SS. Weisel describes in gut wrenching detail the death of a young boy and a man standing behind Weisel posing the question, “where is God.” Weisel’s internal dialogue responds with, “Here he is… he is hanging here on this gallows.”
Soelle points to an inner relationship between the reality of Christ and the reality of those suffering. We find, Soelle says strongly, that God suffers with the suffering and his seen in the one suffering as well. In all of the talk about finding God it is sobering to think where we might find Him. If we find Him on the cross, shouldn’t we also find him in the shelter, the refugee camp, and the cancer wing of the hospital. This is not a glorification of suffering, at least from my point of view, but a call to look for Christ where He is most likely found.