Job 4:1-7:21
Isn’t Job eloquent for a man at the end of his tether? If it had been me who was in his situation and one of my friends had given me a lecture about my sufferings I suspect my answer would have been far less poetic and a lot shorter. Perhaps about two words long... And so we stumble upon one of the glorious aspects of Old Testament - its exploration and celebration of human experience and creativity. This is not just some rule book or instruction leaflet but a dazzling tapestry of living faith, simultaneously emblazened with wonder and catastrophe. It truly captures the drama of people, soaked full of the image of God and yet in the noose of trespass and decay. And this is where Eliphaz comes in; so smart, so sorted and so certain that life can be whittled down to the comprehension of mankind. I know his position well as it is one I know I so readily adopt - that of the irritating dork who assumes that they know the full story and who is ready to pronounce judgement based on this assumption. It seems that the God of this book is not like Eliphaz and me (and that is something truly to be thankful for!) as he values Job’s questions without having to shoot out immediate answers and, for a time at least, he listens quietly until the wounded man has said his piece.
Matthew 19:1-15
From Jesus’ discussion about divorce we pick up an absolutely crucial principle for approaching the bible - that our quest is not to find particular verses that prescribe this action or that behaviour, but rather, we are to give ourselves to digesting and sifting through the poetry and the history, the law and the prophecy in order that we may expose the overarching desires of our God. Simply to get all the verses about divorce and put them on one page is not an adequate approach - it will likely both underplay the high desires of God and instil a kind of judgementalism towards those who we don’t think have followed the rules. No, rather, we are to engage with the book in order to discover the One who lies behind it. And in so doing we discover that God’s demands absolute to-the-death faithfulness along with never-lapsing-for-a-moment purity and yet at the same time offers reckless forgiveness and restoration. This approach to the bible, rather than proof-texting and rule-defining, is what we see all throughout the New Testament and is the only one that seems to be worthy of our ridiculously awesome God.
Psalm 17:1-5
“I have resolved that my mouth will not sin.” I once resolved that my mouth would not taste chocolate for an entire month. I think I lasted about 3 days.
