Lectionary # 455. Reflection for Sept. 29, Monday of 26th week.

Scripture: Monday of 26th week: Job 1:6-22. Psalm 17:1.2-3.6-7. Luke
9:46-50. Lectionary # 455:

Do you ever use a fast-forward button when watching a video?
Sometimes even the producers use a fast-forward by showing us the end
before the beginning of a thriller film. It makes us think and creates
exciting curiosity. Usually this is done in science fiction films and
thrillers. In a sense, this can happen to us as we read Job, one of the
Wisdom books of the Hebrew Scriptures. Its original language is one of the
most difficult to translate! We already have heard Job many times and
probably even recall it through many of its citations by homilists, for
example, one should have the patience of Job or we are but dust and ashes.
Everything that happens to Job in chapter one is cataclysmic. But if you
fast-forward to the last chapter, you find out that everything he had lost
is restored in a different, new, and better way. Surely these two chapters
are scriptural fiction to help us get into the central struggles of Job as
he wrestles with his relationship with God.
The inspired producer of Job is wise enough to situate the book
outside of Israel for he is going to challenge some of the righteous
traditions of the pious and even dispute with God. He is not Irish but a
Middle-Easterner. Let us say Job hales from the land northeast of the
Jordan river. This makes it safe for the wisdom writer to challenge and
confront ordinary religious thinking. Job has doubts and his three friends
do not really help him in the end since they too are thinking and judging
according to their standards and not God's. Job finds himself on a dung
hill scraping his scabs as he tries to figure out why bad things happen to
an apparently good person. Don't we all feel that way sometimes? Why did
this happen to me? Why does God do this to us? Is God on our side or not?
Job is a good story about our own spiritual journey and can help us through
our doubts, our lack of trust, and our very very limited wisdom. Who can
really fathom the thoughts of God?
Yes, the thoughts, the tauntings of so called friends, the traditions
that seem to lose their appeal, the devotions that leave us insipid bother
us too like they bothered Job. He, however, does remain and persevere
through all of this and eventually allows God to speak to him. Then he
gains wisdom of heart and the grace necessary to pick up the sticks and
move on to start a new fire in his life. We, too, need this Wisdom book to
help us grow in humility, poverty of spirit, and honesty before the God who
gave us all that we have; sometimes we lose what we have in spirit and in
possessions. The book teaches us to fast-forward and keep the end chapter
of our lives in front of us as we move through the other frames that
unravel our personal stories.
We can start today by praying with Job in his first ordeal where
everything he has is taken away. He does pray, "Naked I came forth from my
mother's womb, and naked shall I go back again. The Lord gave and the Lord
has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." In all this Job did not
sin, nor did he say anything disrespectful of God." Amen.