Thursday, August 8, 2019
“My complaint is with God, not with people. I have good reason to be so impatient. Look at me and be stunned. Put your hand over your mouth in shock. When I think about what I am saying, I shudder. My body trembles. “Why do the wicked prosper, growing old and powerful? They live to see their children grow up and settle down, and they enjoy their grandchildren. Their homes are safe from every fear, and God does not punish them. Their bulls never fail to breed. Their cows bear calves and never miscarry. They let their children frisk about like lambs. Their little ones skip and dance. They sing with tambourine and harp. They celebrate to the sound of the flute. They spend their days in prosperity, then go down to the grave in peace. And yet they say to God, ‘Go away. We want no part of you and your ways. Who is the Almighty, and why should we obey him? What good will it do us to pray?’ (They think their prosperity is of their own doing, but I will have nothing to do with that kind of thinking.) Job 21:4-16
One of the things you’ve got to admire
about Job is the tenacious way he will not be satisfied with anything less than
a complete vindication of faith in God.
When life came unglued for the rich man from Uz the only thing he had
left from his previous life was faith.
His riches were gone, stolen by thieves; his children had been taken in
a freak accident; his health had turned to painful boils covering his whole
body; with all that calamity having befallen the family his place in the
community vanished as he became suspect of hiding some deep, dark secret that
had God all ticked off. And even Job’s
wife had given up, sniping at what was left of Job’s faith; she got in his face
and harped: why don’t you just get
it over; curse God and die.
Can we talk? If you were Job, wouldn’t you be a just a little
curious if God was really good, and keeping faith was worth it all? Yet, despite the horrible circumstances, and
the obvious question on the table about keeping on with God, that is exactly
what Job believed. His answer to his
wife’s snarky question about giving up was the archetype of integrity which
never ceases to cling to truth:
But Job replied, “You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” So in all this, Job said nothing wrong. Job 2:10
In defense of Mrs. Job, it’s hard to sit
by and watch your loved one suffer. When
I got badly injured playing football in high school, my father got to the hospital
after they’d taken me to surgery. When
they wheeled me out of the operating room I had tubes everywhere and looked white
as a ghost. Dad took one look at what
had been his healthy 16-year-old son that morning…and fainted. Parents protect; that is our nature and
calling. My bride’s nurture gene kicks
into high gear when any one of her children, grand or great-grandchildren is
threatened.
God’s Word tells us Job said nothing wrong
in all of this. And from this we take
our cue: it’s not questioning
God which gets us in trouble; it’s refusing to believe amid our
questioning.
God’s not afraid of our questions; I believe
He rather enjoys the fact that we want to go deeper into the meaning of why we’re
here and how it all works. It’s more the
tone of our questioning that crosses the line between Creator and
creature. You may have heard that a
lawyer never asks a question to which he or she doesn’t already have the answer. That may work for wrangling the truth out in
a courtroom, but it will never do in the prayer room.
For You Today
If you’ve got questions, God’s got
answers. Just remember to ask like a faithful
friend, not a lawyer.
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Title Image: William Blake (public
domain) courtesy of Wikimedia
Commons
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©
Unless otherwise noted, Scripture used from The New Living Translation©
