The first Riddle of the book of Job is a simple one: who wrote it and what made them write it. It is unlike any of the other books, so why is it there? We don’t know the answer of course, and that creates other questions. Can we trust the author, did he really go through all that pain and suffering and survive? In a few minutes, I could think of a dozen questions like that. The riddle continues to this day, with more than a few suggested answers. If you go back to the beginning of this series on grief, you will notice that I gave little to no wording to that answer. It is not an important riddle to solve for me.
The next and more important riddle is, Why did this happen to Job? I have to admit that the book does not answer that riddle either. That calls into question about the whole purpose of the book in the first place. If you are not going to answer my questions, then why are you telling me all this stuff about friends, and grieving and the universe from ants to galaxies?
He is all knowing or as we used to say, omniscient. That’s what most theologians believe it seems. For some reason, God is not willing to tell us everything He knows or why things happen the way we do. Knowing the mind of God is a lifetime search and it always will come up short.
One of my favorite Christian writers is Chuck Swindoll. I remember a devotional he had on the subject of Job’s troubles and his short but meaningful conclusion is that sometimes you are not spared the pain, and sometimes you are not spared the pain of not knowing why you suffer the pain in the first place. Sorry for all the negatives in there.
Anyhow, Swindoll suggested that the best thing you could do is to grab hold of whatever life saving rope that God lowers down to you and tie a knot in it and hang on. I think that is about the best answer you are going to get if you are asking the type of questions I offered above.
But there is an answer in there that needs to be thought about.
God cares about me and you.
Otherwise He wouldn’t send out the rescuers, or in the New Testament the Shepherd searching for the one. This then has to be a priority for the book of Job. You will not get all your questions answered to your satisfaction, sometimes not at all. And if this frustrates you, you join a large group. But if you can look at it from the other side that must have been going through Jesus’s mind while He was on the Cross, then you will tie a knot in the rope and hold on, knowing by faith that the best is yet to come. If not in this life, then certainly the one to come.
There are any number of life lessons to be found in Job. Sometimes we think rich people have it all made and don’t have lots of problems or they are somehow insulated from that side of life. Job is here to say, think again. He might have been the richest man in the middle east, or close to it, but he had the worst problems of all.
Another lesson which we all seem to know is to lean into God when tough times threaten to swamp us. It might be worth seeing each day as a gift and living your life in deep gratitude. Job’s wife seems to have missed that lesson. Who can blame her I guess, but still. I think that is why God spends the last chapters of Job, sometimes called the epilogue, almost boasting to Job about what God has done and how much God knows. He has no need to boast, but He does need to impress on Job that he is talking with the God of the universe.
At some point, we all can go one way or the other, closer or further from God. God is just audacious enough to say to us, “Come to me all you who are burdened and troubled and lost and bewildered. I may not solve your riddles, but I will comfort your soul.”
“I love you,” God says and that will make all the difference.
Not all riddles receive an answer, certainly not here, and maybe not even in heaven. What will happen in heaven is how many times we will but look at the hands and feet of Jesus and love Him all the more. As Ellen White offered, “Heaven will be cheap enough, if we obtain it through suffering. We must deny self all along the way, die to self daily, let Jesus alone appear, and keep his glory continually in view.” Our Father Cares, p 88.
