A friend of mine is going through a hard time and tells me they are having a Job experience. And my heart aches for them, because the biblical character Job sure did have it tough.
Job was wealthy man with large family and extensive flocks. He was “blameless” and “upright,” always did the right thing. God boasts to Satan about Job’s goodness. Satan challenges God that, if given permission to punish the man, Job will turn and curse God. God allows Satan to torment Job to test this bold claim.
Job’s livestock, servants, and ten children die due to war or natural catastrophes. Job tears his clothes and shaves his head in mourning, but he still blesses God in his prayers. Job then got horrible skin sores. His wife encourages him to curse God and to give up, but Job refuses.
Job’s friends come by and try to console him with what they see as the rational for his suffering, suggesting he did something to deserve his fate, and it all falls on his ears as cold comfort. Job’s friends are offended that he scorns their wisdom. He laments the injustice that God lets wicked people prosper while he and countless other innocent people suffer.
God then brings him to an understanding that believers don’t always know what God is doing in their lives. In the end, Job answers God by saying, “I have declared that which I did not understand.” God then blessed Job with twice as much as he had before his trials began.
Although Job got no new information about the problem of suffering, he experienced a transformation, an individualized understanding of the Divine.
It is my thought that this transformation of faith is available to everyone. Before his trials, what Job knew of God was what he had learned from others. Through his trails he now not only has his schooling to lean on but a personal experience and understanding of the Divine.
Marcus Borg describes this well in His book, Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, stating about Job, “His experience convinced him that God was real in spite of the human inability to see fairness in the world. His experienced changed him: “Therefore I melt into nothingness, and repent in dust and ashes,” Job said. As Job’s old construction of the world (and himself) melted away, he “repented” that is, he changed.”
You might be thinking, “Wait a minute, Chaplain Birdie, did you not say in the beginning of the story that Job was blameless? Why would he need to repent?”
I invite you to broaden your ideas around the idea of repenting. Let us consider the idea that to repent means quite a bit more than expressing remorse for a misdeed. Perhaps it is a change of heart, or a willingness to change for the better. Or even a broadening of one’s thoughts, feelings, and ideas about the Divine. Maybe it could mean a kind of transformation!
My friends it is my hope and prayer that as we approach Lent we keep in mind the wonderful opportunity it presents. Sure, there are rituals and rules surrounding what we give up for lent and how to practice repentance. Let us also consider that we might experience a transformation in the form of an individualized understanding of the Divine in addition to, or even beyond, what we may have been taught. For as it says in the scripture Romans 12:2,
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Thank you for reading and be blessed this day.
Comments