Today’s first reading,
Job 1:6-22, at first was very disturbing to me!
I said to myself: “How can God give Satan permission to attack Job, a
righteous person, destroy his possessions and take the life of his children.
What cruelty! God? God as I know
God? No way!” I vehemently oppose this image of God. I
reject it!
Jesus does not present
God to us as a cruel God. On the contrary, Jesus shows us that God is
compassionate, heals the brokenhearted, binds up wounds, makes the deaf to hear
and the dumb to speak, and gives vision back to the blind, spiritually and
physically blind. The lame walk and the
dead are restored to life, physically and spiritually. Satan is cast out, confronted, thrown into
the swine.
So what does Job teach us? Not that God is cruel but that God shields us from that form of destruction that is eternally fatal: the lost of our souls, spiritual death. Job remains strong in his faith and in his trust of God, because God did not abandon him at all. Job’s love for his Creator God never wavered because of God’s power at work in the depth of his being. Job comes through the sufferings of his life stronger than ever. Why? Because God never left his side.
We learn this same lesson
from Jesus, who did not escape the sufferings of this world either. Like Job and Jesus, each of us who cling to our faith will rise from
the “ashes of death,” whatever form death takes. Who we really are and what
really matters—our eternal salvation, our faith and trust in the Lord, our love
for God, others and ourselves—is strengthened and purified as gold tried in
fire, as we pass through this “valley of tears.” None of us, who believe in Jesus, who cling
to God, is diminished by the difficulties of this life. No! Our true selves
emerge, as it did for Job!
No comments:
Post a Comment