‘God, where are you?’ Kentucky pastors grapple with faith after deadly tornado
“God, where are you?”
That’s the question Sean Ryan, a London, Kentucky, pastor, asked his congregation aloud Sunday.
He knew it was one of many those at his church want answered on the heels of a beastly storm and apparent tornado that killed at least 19, sent 10 others to the hospital with critical injuries and left destruction in its wake.
Ryan, like many across Laurel and Pulaski counties, sheltered in his basement Friday night when high winds ripped through his community. It left dozens of homes flattened, buildings crumpled, trees snapped, a Lutheran church destroyed and at least 19 people dead. They were 25 to 93 years old.
A few hours later, after Ryan and his wife put their 3-year-old daughter to bed, Ryan sat alone at his desk, grappling with this deadly disaster. A Christian, he questioned why an all-powerful God would allow such destruction to occur.
Why had some lives been spared? Why had others died?
Knowing his congregation would look to him for answers, he wrestled over how to answer it.
“I was sitting there thinking, ‘What can we say?’” he told his First United Methodist congregation.
“My question was, ‘Where are you, God?’”
By Saturday morning, once the extent of the damage was known, Ryan said he felt gratitude that his home wasn’t damaged, gratitude that the church remained unscathed. He felt blessed, he said.
But why would God bless him and not others?
“If you spared me, but you didn’t spare them, where were you in this?” Ryan shouted from the pulpit. “God, what are you up to? What are you doing and why can’t you fix this?”
Ryan said he doesn’t ascribe to the belief that God punishes bad behavior by causing bad things to happen, nor does he believe in attributing tragic death as “in God’s plan.”
Rather, “to love our sinful world is to suffer. To love someone is to suffer. If God is love, that is why he suffers,” he said. “And it turns out, God is right there with us.”
Sunday afternoon, while emergency crews were still working across storm-scarred counties, neighbors worked to collect and disperse the wreckage in the Oaks of London Subdivision.
Situated on a golf course scattered with debris, volunteers handed out water and food to people cleaning up their property. Others picked up trash and helped salvage personal items from destroyed homes.
Lacy Castle was home with his wife Friday night when the tornado lifted the roof off his house and tossed it down the street in one fell swoop.
He felt grateful, he said Sunday, to have made it out alive.
The couple who moved to London three years ago from Mount Sterling was sheltering in a closet in a middle room of their one-story home when Lacy said they heard what sounded like an explosion.
“All the sudden, you looked up and could see the sky,” Castle said. “Boom and it was gone.”
He said he had to dig his wife out from underneath a pile of ceiling drywall.
Two miles away, Slate Hill Baptist Church, one of Laurel County’s oldest churches, also was missing its roof.
Unable to meet in their building for a church service Sunday morning, the roughly 40-person congregation gathered a few blocks from First United Methodist Church to hear their pastor, Robert Williams, preach.
It wasn’t their usual gathering place; the actual church building was missing its roof.
Perched on a hill above Barbourville Road, the church building had been squarely in the path of Friday night’s tornado. Most of the church’s roof was gone and so was part of the back wall.
All around it, the tornado’s path was visible: Trees were uprooted, snapped in half and, in some cases, tossed across the road. On Sunday morning, work crews had slowed traffic on the road in order to continue cutting through trees to restore impacted power lines.
Williams had initially planned to preach a sermon titled, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy.”
Once he learned the extent of the damage Saturday to not only his church but the community, he questioned whether that was the message his congregation needed.
“When I came up here yesterday, I was wrestling with (whether) I need to do another sermon for the disaster,” Williams said in front of his church Sunday afternoon. “And I felt the Holy Spirit say, ‘No, I gave you that sermon for a reason.’ He knew this was going to happen.
“God knows everything.”
Williams preached from the sixth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew, verses 25-27. He had one goal in mind: to remind the 25 of his congregants who made it to his sermon that God takes care of you.
He knows on the heels of the beastly storms Friday and Saturday, some may question their faith and God’s presence.
“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear . . . But seek first His kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you, as well,” Saint Matthew said.
Williams added, “We never know why things happened, but we just know God is in control no matter what.”
Back at First United Methodist, Ryan closed his sermon with an answer to his initial question.
“So you say, God where are you? The truth is, I believe where God is is under the pile of houses out at Sunshine Hill. God is in the trailer park that has been torn to pieces. God is on the street where the houses have no roofs. God is in the intensive care unit where people are being treated for serious injuries.”
Teary, his voice cracking, Ryan said, “God is there with the people, searching for their family, their pets, their heirlooms.
“He’s there!”
And he will redeem their suffering, he said.
“If there is suffering now, there is glory to come,” Ryan assured his congregation.
“God sees suffering, and He is going to turn it into glory.”
This story was originally published May 19, 2025 at 4:30 AM.
