Readings for today: Job 40:6-24, 41-42, Psalm 29
It was theologian Sally McFague who once defined sin as a refusal to accept our place. We refuse to accept the place in God’s created order. We refuse to accept the role God planned for us to play in His great salvation story. We refuse to accept the purpose for which we were created and the result is chaos. Suffering. Pain. Death. Humanity abandoned the call to care for the world God created and instead seeks to exploit it for our own ends. Humanity rejected the call to cultivate the earth and help it thrive and flourish and instead enslaves it to satisfy our insatiable desires. Humanity walked away from the call to love and serve one another and instead chose to compete with fellow human beings for resources thus resulting in warfare and violence. Why does Job suffer? On a cosmic level, it is because a key cog in the universe is missing. Humanity has yet to take her rightful place as God’s representative and image-bearer on earth. We have yet to fulfill the creation mandate to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and exercise dominion over it as God had originally intended. Our unwillingness to accept our responsibility is what creates the mess we find ourselves in.
I love how the Message version puts it in Job 41:11 where God plainly says to Job, “I’m in charge of all this - I run this universe.” In the face of God’s holiness and power, Job can only bow his head. He says, “I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me, made small talk about wonders way over my head…I admit I once lived by rumors of You; now I have it all firsthand - from my own eyes and ears! I’m sorry - forgive me. I’ll never do that again, I promise!” (Job 42:3, 5-6 MSG) Job finally understands his place. He finally understands his position before God. He finally grasps the vastness of the gap that exists between us and God. And he is humbled. Notice he never receives an answer to all his questions but those questions have ceased to have any meaning for Job. Even if God did give him an answer, it wouldn’t matter because Job has seen God face to face and it is enough.
At the end of the day, what does the Book of Job teach us? It teaches us that God is God and we are not. It teaches us that God’s ways are higher than our ways and His thoughts higher than our thoughts. It teaches us that God is infinite and we are finite. Most of all, it teaches us humility before God. He has a plan. He is working all things for our good. We don’t need answers so much as we need His presence in our lives. And the great news is that when we seek Him with all our hearts, He promises He will be found.
Readings for tomorrow: Exodus 1-4