August 29

Job 31:1-33:33; 2 Corinthians 3:1-18; Psalm 43:1-5; Proverbs 22:8-9

If your husband happens to come home from the Redbox near you saying that he got a “heart-warming, feel-good movie that you are really going to like,” and that movie is Miracles from Heaven, don’t believe him. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great movie, but if crying your eyes out and having your gut wrenching the entire movie is your idea of “heart-warming and feel-good,” then go ahead, watch it. My instincts were telling me to be wary and I should have listened.

Basically, the whole movie (spoiler alert!) is about this family watching one of their daughters suffer from an incurable disease and how awful an experience that is. They are believers in Jesus and the movie does a really good job of showing the struggle to keep your faith in the midst of such suffering and trying circumstances.  The mother, in particular, doubts and wavers in her faith. At one point she says that all too common line, “Why would a good and loving God let my innocent child suffer like this?” I kept thinking throughout the movie, she really needs to read Job. Job answers all those questions.

Job is one of God’s greatest gifts to us in Scripture. For me, it answers the “why” question. It answers the doubts and disbelief that God is there or even cares. In today’s reading, we see Job make his final case: “Oh, that I had someone to hear me! I sign my defense - let the Almighty answer me; let my accuser put his indictment in writing” (Job 31:35). Earlier Job again makes his defense that he has done nothing wrong to deserve this kind of suffering. Job is bold with God. Job is completely honest with God. Job is disgusted with God and totally done talking about it.  He almost views God as someone who has unjustly afflicted him and has then turned completely silent, not willing to answer his cries.

This is the gift part of Job. How many of us have felt that way? In the midst of our suffering, we feel angry, confused, and alone. Job shows us that we can be bold with God. We can be honest with God. We can even be frustrated with the way we seem to understand him working. God can handle it. God did handle it with Job and he will handle it with us. But what Job also reminds us is that there are things going on in the heavenly realms that we have no idea about. There is a whole other narrative that is totally unseen on earth. Will we have the faith to trust that other narrative God is writing? Will we, like Job, refuse to curse or deny God? Will we hold onto our faith that he is a good God even when nothing around us points to that?

Why does God allow such suffering? I don’t know.  But God is always at work in the heavenly realms doing things that I can’t begin to comprehend the reasons behind. I do know that God is still aware and participating with what is happening (just as he did with Job). I do know that I am not alone, that Jesus is with me and lives in my heart and that he will one day make all things new. And I do know that he has good for me in the future just as he did (spoiler alert!) for Job. God is in the business of restoration.

Psalm 43:5 says, “Why are you downcast, O my soul? Why so disturbed within me? Put your hope in God, for I will yet praise him, my Savior and my God.”

- Mary Matthias

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