Scripture – Job 1:1 and 2:1-10
These last two years have been somewhat fraught and even frightening for many people. There have been difficulties to bear and the burden of uncertainty to carry; Will I be able to go back to my job once the pandemic is over? How will I feed the children? I am not clever enough to home school my children – I don’t want them to suffer because I can’t manage? Sadly, it has all been just too much for many folk
Today we encounter Job in todays scripture reading. It is an incredible story where a blameless and an upright man experiences suffering for no good reason. This story has been interpreted by many theologians as responding to the question of divine justice – is God just? However, look more deeply into the story and you can see that there is a different question to be explored.
The Satan, or the adversary, asks God the question regarding the question of selfless love. Can love exist when there is nothing or no one responding to the love that is offered? Job is upright and blameless, but will he remain strong and upright if his circumstances are changed? Satan asks God if he will allow him, to test Job. God allows Satan to cause Job to suffer so long as Job isn’t killed. Satan sees about arranging the most awful tests for Job, to begin with he loses all his possessions, his livestock and all his children. There are many more tests to endure and Job remained upright and sinless. This is important because it sheds some light on the integrity of Job’s wife and her reaction to Job’s second test when his body is covered in weeping sores. Remember too that she has also lost all her possessions wealth and her children. Almost begging she goes to her husband “Curse God, and die”
How can Job hold on to his integrity for so long?
If we were to write a lament to God, following the last two years, the pandemic, the fear of loss, the uncertainty of the future. How might it begin – how might it end. Would our love for God and our integrity still be intact?
A short prayer for you:
Living God,
we pray for those who have lost hope, for those who have lost hope and see no end to the suffering, medical, economical, and spiritual Covid 19 has caused.
We pray for those who have given up hope for a revived and better future.
Living and loving God, help us to see beyond all suffering and see your all-encompassing love.
Lord of all hopefulness,
Hear our prayer.