After hearing God’s great address Job says,
My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes (Job 42:6)
Well, his friends had been telling Job that his sufferings were caused by sin, hadn’t they? And he had countered by insisting that he was innocent and that his sufferings were not just. So, when Job repents it seems like maybe Job’s friends were right after all and that Job was admitting he was wrong.
Ah, but what was Job repenting of? We need to go back just one verse:
You said, “Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me” (v4).
That’s what God’s address is all about, questioning Job. God fires at Job question after question, effectively asking him, “Do you have the wisdom and what it takes to run the universe?” (Job 38-41). As Rob Smith (“What Job and Jesus teach us about suffering” in Briefing, December 2007, 13) points out:
…Job is not repenting of sins that have allegedly brought his suffering upon him. Instead, Job is repenting of his demand that God explain himself.
As Rob puts it, “We are not owed answers.” Indeed, we often wouldn’t understand them if God gave them to us. Rob gives the example of the time when he had to pin down his screaming son to save his life, while the doctor put an IV line into his arm. His son was too young to understand any explanation Rob might give – he just looked at Rob with fear and bewilderment as he kept on screaming.
My wife’s only sibling was killed instantly when a drunken motorist ploughed into the back of his car while it was stopped at a red light. At the funeral the minister, Neil MacLeod, gave a helpful illustration that has stuck with me ever since. He spoke about the way God is working out his perfect plan and how it is as though he is weaving an unspeakably beautiful tapestry – when we see the finished product it will take our breath away! If we were able to look over God’s shoulder at the tapestry as he worked on it we would be able to see evidence of design and purpose. BUT we can’t do that. We can only look at it from the other side. And the other side of the tapestry just looks like a tangled mess. It’s very hard to see much evidence of design.
May the Lord enable us to trust him as we experience anxiety and confusion in the midst of seemingly inexplicable affliction! Such faith is not blind or irrational, precisely because he is trustworthy.
Posted June 5, 2008
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