“I had heard about you
before, but now I have seen you.” (Job 42:5)
It all happened
in an instant; in a moment; in a flash. One day he could choose his tee time at
the nicest course on the planet; the next he couldn’t even be a caddie. One day
he could zip across the country in his Lear
jet to see the heavyweight bout at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas; the next he
couldn’t afford a bus across town. Talk about your calm becoming chaos. The
first thing to go was his empire – the market crashes and his assets tumble;
what’s liquid goes dry. What’s been up goes down. Stocks go flat, and Job goes
broke. And there he sits in his leather chair and soon-to-be-auctioned-off
mahogany desk when the phone rings with news of the next calamity: the kids
were at a nearby resort for the holiday when a storm blew in and took them with
it.
Shell-shocked
and speechless, Job stares out the window and into the sky that seems to be
getting darker by the second. He starts praying, telling God that things simply
can’t get any worse than they already are. And that’s exactly what happens. He
feels a pain in his chest that’s more than last night’s chili. The next thing
he knows, he’s bouncing in the back of an ambulance with wires stuck to his
chest and needles stuck in his arm. He ends up hooked up to a heart monitor in
a community hospital room. Next to him is a stranger who doesn’t speak English.
Not that Job is lacking for conversation, mind you.
First there’s his
wife. And who could blame her for being crazy upset at the day’s calamities?
Who could blame her for telling Job to curse God? But to curse God and die? You
know, if Job didn’t feel completely abandoned before, you know he does the
minute his wife tells him to pull the plug and get it over with. Then there are
Job’s friends. They have the bedside manners of a platoon of drill sergeants,
and the compassion of serial killers. A slightly revised version of their
theology might sound a little bit like this: “Wow, you must have done something
really bad! We know that God is good, so if bad things are happening to you
then you must have been pretty bad. Period.”
“You are doctors
who don’t know what they’re doing,” Job says. “Oh, please be quiet! That would
be your highest wisdom.” (Job 13:4-5) Translation?
“Why don’t you just shut up and take
your stupid philosophy back to the dump where you learned it.” “I’m not a bad
man,” Job argues. “I’ve paid my taxes. I’m active in my community. I’m a major
contributor to the United Way and a
volunteer at my kids’ school.” Job is, in Job’s eyes, a good man. And a good
man, he reasons, deserves a good answer.
“Your suffering
is for your own good,” says Elihu, a young preacher fresh out of seminary who
hasn’t lived long enough to be cynical, or hurt enough to just be quiet. He
paces back and forth in the hospital room with his Bible under his arm and his
finger punching the air. “God does all these things to a man — twice, even
three times — to turn back his soul from the pit, that the light of life may
shine on him.” (Job 33:29)
Job follows his
pacing like you’d follow a Ping-Pong match – head turning from side to side in
rapid succession. What the young man says isn’t particularly bad theology, but
it isn’t a lot of comfort either. So, Job slowly begins to tune him out and gradually
slides lower and lower under the covers. His head hurts; his eyes burn; his
legs ache. And he can’t stomach any more hollow homilies. Yet his question
still hasn’t been answered: “God, why is this happening to me?” So God speaks.
Out of the
thunder, he speaks. Out of the sky, he speaks. For all of us who would put
ditto marks under Job’s question and sign our names to it, he speaks. For those
of us who have dared to say, “If God is God … ,” or “If God is so good, then why
…,” God speaks. He speaks out of the storm and into the storm, because that’s where
Job is. And sometimes that’s where God is best heard. God’s voice thunders in
the room. Elihu sits down and Job sits up, and the two will never be the same
again. “Who is this that darkens my counsel with words without knowledge?” (Job
38:2) Job doesn’t respond. “Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and
you shall answer me.” (Job 38:3) “Where were you when I laid the
foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you know so much.” (Job 38:4) One question would have been enough for
Job, but it wasn’t enough for God.
“Do you know how
its dimensions were determined and who did the surveying?” God asks. “What
supports its foundations, and who laid its cornerstone, as the morning stars
sang together and all the angels shouted for joy?” (Job 38:5-7) Questions rush out
like sheets of rain. They splash in the chambers of Job’s heart with a wildness
and a beauty and a terror that leave Job, and every Job who has ever lived drenched
and speechless, watching the Master redefine who’s who in the universe. “Have
you ever once commanded the morning to appear, and caused the dawn to rise in
the east? Have you ever told the daylight to spread to the ends of the earth,
to end the night’s wickedness?” (Job 38:12) God’s questions aren’t intended to teach; they’re
intended to stun. They aren’t intended to enlighten; they’re intended to
awaken. They aren’t intended to stir the mind; they’re intended to bend the
knees.
“Has the
location of the gates of Death been revealed to you? Do you realize the extent
of the earth? Tell me about it if you know! Where does the light come from, and
how do you get there? Or tell me about the darkness. Where does it come from?
Can you find its boundaries, or go to its source? But of course you know all
this! For you were born before it was all created, and you are so very
experienced!” (Job 38:17-21) Finally, Job’s feeble hand lifts and God stops
long enough for him to respond. “I am nothing — how could I ever find the
answers? I lay my hand upon my mouth in silence. I have said too much already.”
(Job 40:4-5)
God’s message
has finally connected: Job’s a peasant, telling the King how to run the
kingdom. Job’s an illiterate, telling e. e. cummings to capitalize his personal
pronouns. Job’s a bat boy, telling Babe Ruth to change his batting stance. Job
is the clay, telling the potter not to press so hard. “I owe no one anything,”
God declares in the crescendo of the wind. “Everything under the heaven is
mine.” (Job 41:11) And Job couldn’t argue. Job can’t argue. What’s Job got to
say? God owes no one anything. No explanations. No excuses. No help. God has no
debt, no outstanding balance, and no favors to return. God owes no man
anything. Which makes the fact that he gave us everything even more unbelievable,
don’t you think?
And how you
interpret this holy presentation is, in my opinion, key. Because you can
interpret God’s hammering speech as a divine “in-your-face” beat-down, if you
want. You can use the list of unanswerable questions to prove that God is
harsh, cruel and distant. You can use the Book of Job as evidence that God
gives us questions with no answers. But if you’re going to do that, you’re going
to need some scissors. Because to do that requires you to cut out the rest of
the book of Job. Because that’s not how Job heard it. All his life, Job had
been a good man. All his life, he’d believed in God. All his life, he talked
about God, had notions about God, and prayed to God. But in the storm Job sees God. He
sees Hope. Lover. Destroyer. Giver. Taker. Dreamer. Deliverer. It’s no longer
just talk about God. It’s no longer just having some thoughts about God. It’s
no longer just an intellectual exercise praying to an invisible God. It’s seeing
God.
Job sees the
tender anger of a God whose unending love is often received with mistrust. Job
stands like a blade of grass against the consuming fire of God’s splendor.
Job’s demands melt like wax as God pulls back the curtain and heaven’s light
falls unsurpassed across the earth. Job sees God. And
God could have turned away at this point. Right? I mean the gavel has been
slammed and the verdict’s been rendered. The Eternal Judge has spoken. But God isn’t
angry with Job. Firm? Yes. Direct? No doubt about it. Clear and convincing?
Absolutely. But angry? No. God is never irritated by the questions of an honest
seeker. And if you were to underline any passage in the Book of Job, I’d underline
this one: “I had heard about you before, but now I have seen you.” (Job 42:5) Job
sees God — and that’s enough. But that’s not enough for God.
The years to
come find Job once again sitting behind his mahogany desk with his health
restored and profits way up. His lap is once again full of children and
grandchildren and great-grandchildren — for four generations. And if Job ever
wonders why God doesn’t bring back the children he had taken away, he doesn’t
ask. But maybe he doesn’t ask because he knows that his children could never be
happier than where they are – in the presence of the One he’s seen so briefly. And
something tells me that Job would do it all over again, if that’s what it took
to hear God’s voice and to stand in His presence. Even if God left him with his
bedsores and bills, Job would do it again. Why? Because God gave Job more than
Job ever dreamed. God gave Job Himself.
And he’s done
the same for us. “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,
so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.”
(John 3:16) I guess seeing is believing. Or, then again, maybe
believing is seeing.
Grace,
Randy
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