Job

We've rented a cottage on a remote lake up near North Bay. Unlike our trip to Newfoundland, this cottage has wireless, high-speed internet. It's beautiful.

So this morning I read Job. Poor Job. He didn't know what hit him. What was happening to him had everything to do with otherworldly conversations and nothing with him, except that he was a good-living person. Stripped of everything in order to prove a point, he still did not walk away from God. Sure, he complained, not as much because of his illness and life, but because of God's apparent silence.

And his friend's did nothing to comfort him. They kept telling him to stop challenging God and questioning; that God would not be punishing him unless he sinned. Job insisted he had not sinned and did nothing to warrant this, except obey God.

I can't help but see Job as a symbol of Christ in some sense. Job, in chapters 29 and 31, explains the good he did, how he was a model citizen, yet God saw fit to bring this upon him without reason. I think of Isaiah 53:9-11 which states about Jesus that "it was the Lord's Will to crush him." What happened to Job doesn't make sense by earthly understanding. His friends did not have the capacity to explain what was going on - Job must have sinned. And Jesus death makes no sense in an earthly sense - it is a supernatural response to our sin, not his own.

Anyway, I also enjoyed Job's sarcastic response to his friends in chapter 26:1 to 4 -- "Job said: You have really been helpful to someone weak and weary. You have given great advice and wonderful wisdom to someone truly in need. How can anyone possibly speak with such understanding?" See, Job had asked them to be quiet, that they were not helping, but that didn't work, and they weren't listening to him, so he turns up the sarcasm.

Mind you, God does the same thing when he finally speaks in chapter 38. It is evident most in v. 18 to 21: And how large is the earth? Tell me, if you know! Where is the home of light, and where does darkness live? Can you lead them home? I'm certain you must be able to, since you were already born when I created everything." Hmm.

There's a lot of stuff going on in Job. I read John Ortberg's "God is Closer than you Think" when we were in Newfoundland. He had some neat insights. Either way, at the end, Job was right and God lavished blessing on him. God never did explain why he did what he did. But that Job shouldn't pretend to be God. God does what he does. And then God blessed Job.

I think I've learned more from the friends though. I'm sure I've judged others who were going through crap, assumed they did wrong and brought it on themselves. And if I've learned nothing else from Job, it's that sometimes we will not know what's going on, and that's okay. As Donald Miller talks about, we should not expect God's actions to make sense to our logic, after all, why should the creator be subject to the logic he created?