Job answered God: "I'm convinced: You can do anything and everything. Nothing and no one can upset your plans. You asked, 'Who is this muddying the water, ignorantly confusing the issue, second-guessing my purposes?' I admit it. I was the one. I babbled on about things far beyond me, made small talk about wonders way over my head. You told me, 'Listen, and let me do the talking. Let me ask the questions. You give the answers.' I admit I once lived by rumors of you; now I have it all firsthand—from my own eyes and ears! I'm sorry—forgive me. I'll never do that again, I promise! I'll never again live on crusts of hearsay, crumbs of rumor." Job 42:1-6 (the message)
These verses come from the book of Job. This story is about a man whose life is turned upside down by God as a way to show Job’s faithfulness. His health, his family, and his financial resources are all taken from him. Bummer, right? Yikes. So he’s talking with his friends and is crying out to God, asking why he is being treated this way, begging God to take his life so he doesn’t have to suffer anymore, and his friends are telling him to repent of whatever sin caused this so God will stop punishing him. Job knows that he is not being punished however. He knows that he did nothing to deserve all this hurt and sadness. God speaks up at the end of the book and says stuff like... hey guys, I’ve been listening to your conversation. Why are you trying to understand things that you simply cannot? Don’t you know who I am? What I have done? I have storehouses of snow and hail. I create lightening and rain. I made the sea and the clouds. Were you there? No? Have you seen the gates of death? Were you there when I laid the foundations of the Earth? Yeah, I didn’t think so...Job responds with something like... you right God. I was not there. I do not understand so much and here we are talking like we have an idea of your wonder and magnitude. Your greatness and your plans. That’s cra. It is a blessing to have seen you this way. Here I was questioning you, the God of creation. I thought I had strong faith and that I knew what I was doing... I was wrong. All through sunday school and confirmation I had heard about you, but I never really knew what I was saying. I never really knew you for myself. My bad. That changes today though....And in my bible, the last verse says, “therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes”. Today is Ash Wednesday. Back in the day, ashes was a symbol of repentance. That tradition we hold on to. To begin the season of lent, where we mourn Christ’s death, acknowledging His incredibly humbling sacrifice, we use the ashes to symbolize our daily repentance of sins. We place the ashes in the same way as the cross was placed on our foreheads during our baptism to remind ourselves of the death Christ endured to save us.
Prayer: Savior, God, Thanks for another great day. You are so beyond anything we could ever understand. Thanks for not expecting us or wanting us to even begin to say that we understand Your greatness. We love you f’real. Amen!
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