Our Lives – In the Hands of God – Job 1

Human suffering has ever been a part of this world since the fall of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden.  That is our belief and that is the story that has come to us through the ages – read and pondered by generations from that time until now. Having been created in the image of God and invited to share in the goodness of the creation around them, Adam and Eve were led to believe that they could experience more of life than they were promised by God. Getting Eve to believe that God was not telling them the truth was the serpent’s way of convincing her and Adam that God was holding them back – not allowing their life to be better than it was. Belief in that lie led to the loss of Eden and the loss of their lives.  They found themselves separated from God and unable to restore the relationship through any of their efforts.  Yet God still loved them and cared for them as best he could in the new reality that they had chosen.

The book of Job is a book about human suffering and our response to it in relation to our faith in God. What response is the human to make in the face of suffering? Do we believe in an angry, judgmental, vindictive God who wills us to suffer for our decisions or do we believe in a God who loves us unconditionally and died and rose as a sign that it is not his desire for us to live apart from him.

In the book of Job, the devil approaches God and asks to test the faith of Job.  He believes that Job will only still love God as long as all things are going well in his life but that he will turn and curse God when things go wrong.  His friends believe that Job has done something unforgiveable in the eyes of God. There can be no other explanation for what is happening to him.  Job is severely tested but he does not break.  His faith in God is not broken.  Deep down he still believes that God loves him even when it appears to the world that God has abandoned him.

Henri Nouwen – whose works I have quoted before – wrote about what he called  the “false identities” that contribute to convincing us to live a false life rather than the life we were created to live. He identifies five.  The first is I am what I have. Often we attach our sense of self-worth to our possessions and even our closest relationships. These shape our identity and worth in positive and negative ways. But what happens when possessions are lost or relationships taken away? Is our sense of identity shaken? Do we sink into despair and confusion? What we have is meant to be understood as blessings to be offered to the world in love. Our one true possession is that we are children of God, precious in God’s eyes, loved by God without conditions and held safe in an everlasting embrace.

The second is I am what I do. We are taught to identify who we are by what we do. Our work is not only the way we support ourselves and our family physically but it is the means by which give ourselves to the world – a way to be of service to those around us. A loss of employment can cause us to ask, “Who am I now?” The truth is we are still children of God and loved by God.

The third is I am what others say about me. Each of us has had experiences where we have experienced the judgements and criticisms that often shape who we believe ourselves to be. For instance, being told that we are not very smart or that we are not good enough.  Overcoming these experiences is one of the hardest things we can face in life.  But we need to remember that we need to listen to the voice of God who loves us as we have been created.

The fourth is I am nothing more than my worst moment and the fifth is its mirror, I am nothing less than my best moment.  The fourth tells us we can never rise above the shame of the weakest, most broken parts of our life. It leaves no room for growth, change or redemption, trapping us in a deflated sense of self. The fifth tells us we can never be wrong, never acknowledge weakness or failure.  It traps us in an artificially inflated sense of self.  We are a mix of shadow and light. We will have highs and lows but it is how we respond to these highs and lows that will reveal our true identity.

Back to Job.  Job experienced the loss of all that he possessed. He lost home, business, family and health.  To his friends and to the world, he was a man who must have done something so terrible to appear to lose the love and protection of God.   Job experienced the loss of his status in the society. He was a man much revered and respected in his community and one who was a shining example for others to follow.  What could people think now seeing this great man reduced to a shadow of himself? Then he experienced the judgments and criticisms of his friends who all believed that Job must have committed some heinous sin against God.  Obviously Job was not the person they all believed him to be for why else would such calamities have befallen him?  They  urged him to confess his sin and plead with God for forgiveness that he might be restored in health.   Job was confused about what was happening to him. He could not fathom what he had done that such things have happened to him but he could not bring himself to curse God and die.  He refused to believe that God was responsible for his suffering.  Job threw himself on the mercy of God whom he still believed loved him. In the end all that Job lost was restored because Job never lost his faith in God.  The devil believed that Job only loved God because he was successful. He learned that Job loved God in spite of his possessions, in spite of his status in society and in spite of what others thought or spoke about him.  Job had discovered a truth that would only come to be realized with the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ – God so loved the world that he came to dwell with us, to participate in the fullness of this human struggle and to be not a distant God to be feared and avoided but a God of compassion.

God committed to live in solidarity with us, to share our joys and pains, to defend and protect us, and to suffer all of life with us.   In our Gospel lesson, we found the disciples in a boat in the middle of a storm on the lake.  Jesus is calmly sleeping but the disciples are distraught with fear for their lives.  They awaken Jesus and ask him if he cares about them and their situation.  “Peace, be still”, he says. “ Why are you afraid”, he continues, “have you no faith?”

Job caught a glimpse of the God who had created him and loved him, the God who had created the world and all that was in it, the God who had created him and given him life. But he would never come to experience the fullness of that love, the love, mercy, grace and compassion of God as revealed to the world through Jesus.

Job’s life was in the hands of God in spite of all the devil, Job’s friends or the world might say or do. The lives of the disciples were in the hands of God in spite of the fear they felt at the fierceness of the storm.  May we know that our lives are in the hands of God, may we know that we are loved beyond what we have, beyond what we do, beyond what others may think or say about us and that we are loved at our weakest moments and at our strongest moments.

In the words of the Apostle Paul,

Who will separate us from the love of [God]? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:35, 38)

AMEN