Job

Well shoot, if Pastor Fay is going to use a larger font size, I'm going to use a sans serif font on top of that...

What I know about Job I learned reading a play by Archibald MacLeish titled "J.B.," written in 1958. It is accessible and a good read if you've ever wanted to understand Job but just couldn't bring yourself to plow through it. Too bad--it looks like we're going to be spending the next 13 days reading his story, so move that down the list of your to-read list.

In 3:11, Job cries out, "Why did I not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb?" In 1976, a satiric novel titled "Venus on the Half-Shell," written under the pseudonym Kilgore Trout, had the character travel the universe asking the same question over and over, which was "Why were we put here to suffer and die?" Ask an existential question and you'll get an existential answer, which in this case was "Why not?" In his own way, Job seems to be asking the same thing. It's too early in the story to know that Job knows the answer to his own question even as he poses it, but it still gives us solace today when we suffer setbacks, and we'll run across numerous references as to what God has in mind as we go through the year, but suffice it to say, the answers to our sufferings is NOT "Why not?" God makes it abundantly clear as to what Satan is allowed to do to Job and proscribes specific boundaries, which is a message in itself. As we proceed through Job, remember at all times who is in charge.

Scott