"with a bad joke written over His head"

"That was not for her to know, either.  God worked discreetly, and in the ways that pleased Him.  It had pleased Him that the Children of Israel should sweat and strain under the Egyptian yoke for generations.  It had pleased Him to send Joseph into slavery, his fine coat of many colors ripped rudely from his back.  It had pleased Him to allow the visitation of a hundred plagues on hapless Job, and it had pleased Him to allow His only Son to be hung up on a tree with a bad joke written over His head.

God was a gamesman -- if He had been a mortal, He would have been at home hunkering over a checkerboard on the porch of Pop Mann's general store back in Hemingford Home.  He played red to black, white to black.  She thought that, for Him, the game was more than worth the candle, the game was the candle.  He would prevail in His own good time.  But not necessarily this year, or in the next thousand. . . and she would not overestimate the dark man's craft and cozening.  If he was neon gas, then she was the tiny dark dust particle a great raincloud forms about over the parched land.  Only another private soldier -- long past retirement age, it was true! -- in the service of the Lord."

-- Stephen King, The Stand