Friday, September 5, 2014

Friday, September 5, 2014

Job 19:1-27

“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and that at the last he will stand upon the earth.”

Frederick Buechner’s spiritual writing inspires, challenges and teaches me. Today, I offer a selection from his book Beyond Words in which he discusses Job and God’s apparent refusal to offer an explanation for Job’s suffering:

“God doesn't explain. He explodes. He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway. He says that to try to explain the kinds of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam. He also, incidentally, gets off some of the greatest poetry in the Old Testament. ‘Hast thou entered into the treasures of the snow? Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades? Hast thou given the horse strength and clothed his neck with thunder?’(Job 38:31).

Maybe the reason God doesn't explain to Job why terrible things happen is that he knows what Job needs isn't an explanation. Suppose that God did explain. Suppose that God were to say to Job that the reason the cattle were stolen, the crops ruined, and the children killed was thus and so, spelling everything out right down to and including the case of boils. Job would have his explanation.

And then what?

Understanding in terms of the divine economy why his children had to die, Job would still have to face their empty chairs at breakfast every morning. Carrying in his pocket straight from the horse's mouth a complete theological justification of his boils, he would still have to scratch and burn.

God doesn't reveal his grand design. He reveals himself. He doesn't show why things are as they are. He shows his face. And Job says, ‘I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eyes see thee’ (Job 42:5). Even covered with sores and ashes, he looks oddly like a man who has asked for a crust and been given the whole loaf. At least for the moment.”

Buechner’s insights help me understand Job’s firm assurance that his Redeemer lives. Within the economy of grace, what we lack in rationale is made up for in relationship.

- David Shumaker