Letter From the Pastor

Job's Comforters: In my annual journey through the Bible, I just finished the book of Job which tells the quest of a man trying to understand the reason for his suffering and pain. Job began life with great success, and great virtue. But then it all came crashing in around him. He lost everything: his wealth, his kids, his health. The Book of Job devotes itself to trying to understand "why?"

Along his journey of discovery, Job is joined by several friends with names too difficult to say, let alone spell. At first these friends sit quietly with Job in his grief. Then their humanness gets the better of them and they try to explain the reason for Job's suffering to him. Mostly it's about encouraging Job to confess some sort of hidden sin or simply realize that God's purposes are bigger than Job's.

I noticed two things in this year's reflection on Job:

1) Job's friends don't tell him anything different than what God eventually tells Job, but they are no substitute for God himself. Job casts aside their well-reasoned arguments in his quest to have God hear his complaints. This leads me to belief that the best thing we can do for our friends is help them find a way into God's presence rather than trying to answer all their questions on our own.

2) When God finally faces off with Job on the "why?" question, He poses a series of questions which quickly highlight Job's limited capacity to understand. When God asks Job where he was at the creation of the universe or whether he knows where hail is stored, I used to think that God was simply saying, "I'm bigger than you. Who are you to question me?" After this year's reading, I am convinced that God was really trying to help Job understand that he just wouldn't get it even if He showed him step-by-step. It is awesome that God created human beings with the capacity to learn and transfer knowledge. However, no matter how "cool" our discoveries, we are still a long way off from really understanding creation. I just think of how much more complicated is the movement of my dog's eyebrow than the best robotics the world had discovered up to this point.

In the end, Job submits to trusting God. Maybe that's the best for us, too - to seek Him with all our hearts, and to trust Him.

Rev. Jim Govatos
Senior Pastor