Billy Crystal was recently asked whether he still talks to Gd.
“I don’t trust him,” he said.
After losing his home in the Los Angeles fires and his dear friends Rob and Michele Reiner, both of blessed memory, he has plenty to be angry about. I’ve felt that anger, too. Many of us have.
If Gd controls everything, what are we supposed to do with everything that goes wrong? How do we trust a Gd who could have stopped the suffering but didn’t?
This week, we read the story of Noah: Gd floods the earth, sparing those aboard the ark. It’s a troubling image of divine power. And when we carry that image into our lives—Gd deciding when to destroy, whom to punish, whom to spare—we can make an already painful world even harder to bear.
I struggle with that image of Gd. But I’m moved by what appears at the end of the flood story: a rainbow. Gd offers it as a sign of a lasting bond with humanity and every living creature. I find solace in that connection.
The rainbow doesn’t undo the devastation. It doesn’t explain the loss. But to me, it symbolizes those moments when, even in the darkness, something helps us look up. Something stirs within us and gives us strength to keep going.
Crystal has also spoken about the laughter that has helped carry him through terrible times. His humor doesn’t erase his grief. It helps him keep going.
I wouldn’t tell him what to call that experience. But it makes me think about where I find Gd: in the courage to take another step, the people who help us do it, the unexpected laugh when we thought we had no laughter left.
Maybe that moment of “wow”—when something reaches us through the darkness, whether a rainbow or a moment of humor—is an encounter with Gd. Not a Gd who has the power to destroy, but a Gd who has the power to lift us a little bit higher.
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