Then God comes in a storm. Thundering his mightiness, showering his holiness, blowing his grace across Job’s Face.
“Who are you to question me?” God asks…..
and God shows who God is to Job
Job repents, realizing who God is… Job says that he had “heard” God before, but this is the first time he “saw him”
So why does God show up in the storm?
•I do NOT think God was yelling at Job for complaining
•I do NOT think God was TRYing scare Job: although “fear of God” was probably a side effect”
Godly Encounter (warning, side effects may include “the fear of God”)
I think that when Job glimpsed God, when Job got an inkling of how/who/what God was…
I think when Job felt the MAGNITUDE of God’s LOVE
He realized that knowing the whys and wherefores, having all the answers….being “right” was not going to give him enough to UNDERSTAND the workings of the universe.
A better window, was to understand who God is and that God is present
When I was 5 I busted my lip open riding a bike, just before it was to be loaded on the moving truck. I was riding it around one last time, hit a rock and split my lip open. All the way there I cried.
When I got there, they had to put stitches in, and they surrounded me with a curtain. I was on painkillers.
I was crying for my mother
My mom said she was afraid that she was cutting off the circulation to my hand, she was squeezing it so hard, but even though she kept trying to tell me she was just behind the curtain and she was holding my hand–I couldn’t see her.
And when I finally did see her….it didn’t make everything better. The pain didn’t go away, I didn’t understand any better what exactly it was the doctors were doing to me.
But I felt better.
That is (I think) how Job felt….once he knew God was there, it didn’t fix things, but it did make things better.
And if we get back to what our call is as Church, as the Body of Christ, as Christians, that is our call. We can’t fix everything (sadly), we can’t. But our call is to be present. Our call is to recognize the Holy Spirit is at work in every being. Our call is to make even those who suffer–a little bit better
