What Is the Question?

It has been one of those weeks in which I have heard from several people regarding tragedies in their lives, or in the lives of persons close to them. Somehow, I always feel that, in the back of their mind, their question for me is, "Where is God in all of this?" I don't blame them, for I have asked myself that question many times when looking at the world and its injustices and tragedies, as well as my own life, and the pitfalls I have encountered along the way. Let me preface my remarks by saying that, when some difficulty has arisen in my own life, I cannot say that what I am about to say brought me comfort right away or made the process any easier. But, in hindsight, it has enabled me to take the long view of God and the world, and my experience of both. Currently, I am leading a Bible study on the book of Job, a book which few people have the patience or fortitude to stay with for very long, because IT IS VERY LONG! And yet, many will brighten up and convey their feelings about the book when I mention it. Upon further questioning about the book, it becomes apparent that not many folks have read it all and really wrestled with its message. There is not room here to go into great detail about the book and its characters, nor will I discuss the difficulty evident in the very first couple of chapters of the book, when God makes a deal with Satan. Some folks I have known have not been able to get past that first part. What kind of God gambles with the life of a just man? And that leads me to say that we tend to approach God and the problem of evil by asking the wrong question. If one reads the book of Job with the question "Why" guiding the search, one will likely be disappointed. Job spent very little time with that one as well, though his wife and friends seemed obsessed with it. Asking "why" when tragedy happens is natural, because we hope that knowing why will help make sense of it. In reality, little makes sense when something bad happens. Knowing why something happened does little to lessen the pain, and we still have the loss and pain, don't we? Job kept asking God to appear to him, because he was wondering where God had gone, now that Job was living in desolation. His friends had no patience with such things, and, instead, kept trying to explain away the evil. Job would have none of it, and he persisted in seeking out God, refusing to take no for an answer. And there it is: whatever our sadness or tragedy, whatever our loss or disappointment, we can find a clue to survival in the story of Job. We may never know why a bad or painful thing has happened, but we should never stop beating a path to God's door to insist on God's presence as we go through such events. In the end, what Job received was not an answer to his suffering, what he received was God. Be honest, can you really ask for anything more?