Intersections

  It has arrived - the final week of our series on Job. This reading seems to tie it all up, and hopeful even. But let’s take a step back for a minute. The title for the sermon today comes from verse 5, “My ears had heard of you, but now my eye has seen!” He had survived the suffering and accepted God’s power. Job had been told about all of this, as the Scripture says, but now… it was real. It wasn’t enough to hear of the grace; it needed to be experienced. On the outside looking in, Job appears to be blind. But maybe it was the darkness of his soul that we offered in our prayer earlier. If there is no light no hope, are we blind or just without resources? Blindness has several definitions. The first is the apparent lack of eyesight. But more relevant, it means unquestioning - as in loyalty without question, having no regard for rational thought (as in a blind choice), or even without all information to consider data without bias (like in science for a single- or double-blind test...

  As we’ve been alluding to for a couple of weeks now, our guy Job has finished talking with God, and this week, it’s God’s turn to respond. Now - here’s where we’ve been, as a quick recap of the story the last couple of weeks. Week 1, we learned about Job and how he was a super awesome guy, upright and genuinely faithful. He had lost nearly everything in his life: his children, his business, and his wealth, and then his health was attacked. This is part of the story that the adversary - imagine, again, a dissenter on God’s executive council, wanted to prove that even the most righteous would curse God when their life was reduced to pain and anguish.  Last week , Job talked to his friends, responding to his pain and suffering, wondering where God was in the midst, and thinking that he had been abandoned. Job asked for a meeting with the Almighty so that he could plead his case and be acquitted so that he could be released from suffering. Well - here we are in the third we...

       Complaining is the worst. I mean - with all that wasted energy, you could do so much! Good thing we don’t have any complainers among us! I certainly wouldn’t know any in my household.  Or even all over the Bible! That may be a reason why we can’t get more people to church; there’s so much complaining - just in our scripture. From the Israelites right after they were released from captivity to even Jesus complained about how stubborn people can be. I saw the photo that's on the cover of the bulletin. It inspired me because I imagined the man shouting his complaints into the void, much like yelling at the TV or writing comments on the internet.       Now, you know of those televangelists who love to talk about their faith and prosperity, that God can accomplish anything.  Complaining is the worst. I mean - with all that wasted energy, you could do so much! Good thing we don’t have any complainers among us! I certainly wouldn’t kno...