In the Midst of the Storm

I have several friends who are going through trials that don't make since to me. They are suffering, their families are suffering and there doesn't seem to be an end in sight. When we pray together I hear them by faith holding onto God's promises, yet, what they are experiencing doesn't seem to match up to what they are believing. And sometimes even in the midst of all this suffering God seems to be silent. I find myself grappling to understand God in the midst of suffering.

One of the books of wisdom in the Bible is the book of Job. I have read it many times and to be honest I have found myself wrestling trying to understand how a just God could allow a righteous man to experience so much suffering. The book is forty two chapters long and sometimes when I'm reading the conventional wisdom of Job's friends I find myself thinking that they sound right to me. When the mind is crippled by grief and life ceases to make sense I find myself asking the same questions that Job asked. "Where can wisdom be found? And where is the place of understanding?" (Job 28:12,20)

The story of Job begins by describing a man who was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. In this book we not only have an earthly vantage point of this man but a heavenly one as well. This is a man who is known by God. The LORD himself points Job out to Satan by saying, "Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth..." In these scenes from heaven I find the temporal reality linked to the spiritual reality.

In life human wisdom is often silenced because we simply cannot understand the ways of God in the world. Often when we come to this place of silence we find what Job found. We discover that God speaks to us out of the midst of the storm. Ultimate wisdom belongs to God and God alone. When God speaks to us trough the storms of our lives the end result isn't necessarily that we have all our questions answered but instead that we have a deeper awareness of who God is.

Today is the Saturday between the observation of the Crucifixion and the celebration of the Resurrection of Jesus. I imagine the devastation the followers of Jesus must have experienced on the Saturday between these two life changing events. They had believed that Jesus was the Messiah who had come to set up his kingdom then they had watched him die a humiliating death. From earth's vantage point his death was unfathomable. Ultimate wisdom and understand are found in God alone. God speaks to us out of the storms of life and we know that though we observe the Crucifixion it will be followed by the Resurrection.