We live by faith

Job 1:1, 2:1-10
Job, a sad story of someone who has it all and looses it all. Each of us know many people who have
suffered loss and ask that same question – Why?  Two questions in relation to that come to mind – What
did they do to deserve that? Or maybe – What did I do to deserve that? As Christians we want to know what role God has in suffering. Most of us have difficulty in understanding how a God who loves us so much as to send his Son to die on the cross for us, could be the source of bad things happening to good
people. This is perhaps where we run into the problem of faith versus rational thinking. The problem that we are confronted with in the book of Job, relates to our desire to understand Godʼs nature, to understand more than God has revealed to we humans. Adam and Eve had a similar problem. Since it is not possible to know everything about God, to understand God (if we could, we would be God), or to obtain an explanation which I donʼt believe we will obtain this side of the grave, rather, ought we not be open to Godʼs grace. For we humans there is a hiddenness of God. The last place one would expect to
find God was in the suffering and death of Jesus; God as Jesus among the sick, the outcast, the suffering, and on the cross where God suffered. We cannot understand God and the nature of God by assigning attributes to God  that are derived from our life and experiences. We can only understand God through the cross. Where is God in our suffering? Right there with us, in the last place we tend to look. Maybe the question we ask is what do we do now that bad things have happened? As Christians and as Job discovered, we live by faith.

Pastor Darryl