Job 15:1-18:21
I must say that when Job says “will your long-winded speeches never end?” (16:3) everything in me is inclined to agree with him. I know this is the precious word of the Lord, gifted to us by our heavenly Father to comfort us and train us in all righteousness but isn’t it, to quote the man himself, a little bit long winded? I mean I think the point has already been pretty well established - Job is suffering, his friends say it is his own fault and he is doggedly refusing to accept their accusations. I see there is a little bit of development in the language as each side gets more entrenched in their own position, but does this really need to go on for another 20 chapters before we finally hear the word of the Lord on the subject?? I must confess I don’t really know why Job is so long - it’s a book that I’ve always been completely fascinated by but got a bit lost in - but I do take from it that Christian living is just not a continuous flow of joy and excitement. It seems that God is quite willing to put us through a fair bit of boredom and mind-numbing detail for the sake of our growth and understanding. So, working against my natural tendency to always be looking for the next thing, I’m going to try to really dig into the inner details of Job and ponder upon his continued reverence for God despite his longing for death and, upon the friends’ miserable comforting despite their privileged access to his side.
Matthew 20:20-34
Jesus’ words and actions so often subvert the conventional wisdom about how to pursue the righteousness of God. I think that most Jews would have believed blindness to be a barrier to communion with God. The more merciful members of the community may, potentially, have prayed that a prophet would come to bring healing to the blind so that they could be accepted into the temple of God. But surely none of them, not even the most compassionate Jew, would have thought that God would approach a blind man and ask him what he could do for him. Surely no-one would have believed that God would even tolerate the presence of a disabled man before his impurity (ie his blindness) had been taken away from him. And yet Jesus, God incarnate, while he is in the middle of something, while he has a crowd around him calling out reverence and request, stops. Turns. And looks at the blind men. And when he says “what do you want me to do for you” you feel like he is taking all the world’s religious establishments, turning them upside down and shaking them all about. He is putting himself, the all-powerful, all-conquering master of the universe at the service of two blokes who don’t even know whether they’ve wearing odd socks. Jesus’ complete lack of presumption and his unquenchable desire to hear from people must have felt like a warm summer breeze to those who had been frozen out of the religious community for so long. And his ability to follow through on their requests and actually bring them healing looks like a haymaker following the left-hand uppercut that Jesus has just landed on the chin of everyday religious life. We need more of this empowered openness in our church. And more of it in our world.
Psalm 17:13-15
“I shall be satisfied with seeing your likeness”. At first that seems a bit bland but, after a few moments reflection I realise it is an awesome and simple statement of faith. It is a conviction that I could pursue for the rest of my life and neither be done with nor disappointed by.
