Some Thoughts on Suffering for January 25, 2016

Monday: “If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together” (Job 9:33; NIV)!

            This devotion has nothing to do with last weekend’s sermon. The last few days I’ve been reading Job, and today I was reading Job’s complaint in chapter 9-10. (You can find them here.) I was struck by several things.

            First, early in chapter 9, Job seems to anticipate God’s appearance at the end of the book. In the last few chapters, the Lord challenges Job to answer Him, if he can, and He asks the sufferer a series of questions which are simply beyond human knowing. Here in the early part of chapter 9, Job anticipates that; he knows that God’s ways are beyond his own little ways.

            That reflection—that God is beyond him—leads to the verse I cited above, namely, Job’s wish for a mediator who would bridge the gap between him and his God. I don’t know why I never noticed this before, but isn’t that exactly what Jesus is? The one who bridges the gap between God and men. That’s what St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:5: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.” And Jesus mediation is not just as a go-between. He is the one who creates the bridge by His innocent suffering and death.

            Third, in chapter 10, Job wonders if it would make a difference if God were flesh and blood like he himself is. Would God understand Job’s plight better if He were? And that, too, leads to Jesus, who did become human—fully and completely human. The book of Hebrews repeatedly notes that our Lord Jesus understands us for having become one of us.

            I’m reading Job because I’m thinking about suffering and loss, and I think these three lessons are helpful to frame that reflection: 1) ultimately, God is God and we are not; we do well to remember that. 2) While the difference between God and man could make God seem completely inaccessible, the work of Jesus reminds us that He has opened that pathway again. We may not understand God’s ways, but we can at least say with full certainty that He loves us and desires to have us near Him. 3) Finally, we may not understand God’s ways, but in the incarnation of Jesus, He fully understands ours. That, too, is a source of comfort.