Words of Welcome

  William Blake, Job and His Family  Job 42:1-6, 10-17 We’ve explored a few passages from the second half of the book of Job. What we’ve heard so far is a bit unsettling. We’ve met a God who is willing to make people suffer just to prove a point. Although God uses a hired hand to do this, God is said to be responsible for this “evil that the Lord had brought upon him” (Job 42:11). As we’ve seen, this doesn’t sit well with Job. He wants to know why he has suffered at the hand of God. After all, he is innocent and righteous before God. So why are bad things happening to a good person like Job? Although the Bible is a sacred text, it’s also a very complex and human book. At times it even argues with itself. So, many of us read Job as a response to the conventional wisdom found in the Book of Proverbs. The message of Proverbs is quite simple. If you do the right thing, good things should happen. If you do bad things, then you’ll reap what you sow. That message makes sense on the surfa

Job 38:1-7, 34-41 Job wanted his day in court because, if, as his friends alleged, his own sins caused him to suffer, then he wanted to see the evidence. Since Job wouldn’t admit to anything, one of his so-called friends, a man named Elihu, decided to take a different approach. Rather than blame Job, Elihu told Job to quit questioning God because God is too busy and important to bother with Job and his problems. After all, Job should consider the “wondrous works of God.” Just look around at creation because when you take in the grandeur of creation, you’ll realize how small you really are in the grand scheme of things. (Job 37:14, 23 ).   I get Elihu’s point about the wonder of the creation. Cheryl and I recently visited the Upper Peninsula. We took a boat trip out along the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore and took in Tahquamenon Falls, among other points of interest. Scenes like this produce a sense of awe at the wondrous works of God and you realize how big the universe is and h

  William Blake, Despair of Job Job 23:1-9, 16-17 Job was a righteous and wealthy man. The question is, did he live a charmed life? That’s the question Satan posed to God. While God takes great pride in Job’s faithfulness, Satan wants to know how faithful Job would be if life wasn’t so pleasant. So God and Satan make a wager and God gives Satan permission to make Job suffer. By the time we get to the 23rd chapter of the story, Job has suffered a lot and he is bitter. So, Job wants to take God to court to find out why so much suffering had come his way. ( Job 1 ) As the story goes, Job loses about everything except his wife and his own life. At one point he sits down to grieve his losses and ponder why his life changed so drastically and so quickly. Then his friends stopped by to comfort him, just like good church people do. At first, they sat quietly, letting him vent, but after a while, they got tired of his complaints. That’s because they operated under the assumption that bad th

Adam and Eve in the Garden - Creation - Songea Cathedral, Tanzania Genesis 2:18-24 The film, Cast Away , is a modern-day retelling of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe . In the film, a FedEx plane goes down over the South Pacific and Chuck Noland, who is a FedEx executive played by Tom Hanks, is the only survivor. After he survives the crash, Noland is determined to live long enough to get rescued. He survives his ordeal in part because he develops a friendship with a volleyball with a face he drew with his own blood. Since the ball was produced by the Wilson sporting goods company, he named the ball Wilson. This ball becomes Noland’s conversation partner and companion. The film came out in 2000 so I don’t think I need to worry about spoilers. You’ll be glad to know that the film ends on a happy note. Noland tried for months to get the attention of passing ships and planes, but no one came to rescue him. So Chuck built a raft, loaded all the packages he had saved from the wreckage of