26. God’s non answer in our suffering

Evidently God’s non answer to Job, satisfied Job for he said, “ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know … Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes”, before any of his losses had been restored, and while he was still sitting on the ash pile, naked and covered in sores. It was not when God gave him treasures again that Job re affirmed his faith in God. It was in his naked and natural state, he had been given a glimpse of the supernatural. It was God’s appearance and His voice that shook Job into an acknowledgement, not actually what He said. The silent Father, the hidden One, the Someone out there who it seemed would not answer, spoke. God spoke, and Job heard.

The detail of the former questions escaped Job’s mind for it did not matter now. God was there. The terrible loss of his treasures, that had followed one on the other for Job in his life, had faded when Job understood his place in the considerations of God. When Job refused to give up on God, despite the pleadings of all his accusers, he won the contest with them, and was then privileged to see what he would have missed had he succumbed to their suggestions.

But it does not happen to us like it happened to Job. God’s revealing of Himself in the OT did not make his children stronger. They faithlessly complained, set boundaries for God and asked for tangible evidence of His presence. He often did respond and gave them miracles. Do we also make our faith contingent upon a demonstration of His presence in our lives? Or are we able to express our desires and love for Him in His silence, or in a miracle, whatever is His will? If we expect God’s intervention, it may well be that our faith is destroyed by the absence of proofs. If we do not receive relief from God for our trial, it requires more faithfulness to go forward in Him. If there is no visible message from God that makes for a hard journey, but it grows stronger faith.

If we rely only on messages of His good will for us, then we set ourselves a standard where God does not wish to be. In our own strength of accepting disappointment, we keep ourselves protected against a permanent state of disappointment. We need to understand that we may not manipulate God to do our will, but rather we should be where we do His will no matter what happens in our lives. Hebrews 11 gives lists of faithful saints who did not see the blessings that they had been promised, but they still died in expectation. It seems sometimes that the seen and real and natural world cannot relate to the unseen, unreal, unnatural supernatural world. But when we have a better balance in understanding God in His unseen, unreal, unnatural supernatural world, it may then become part of what comes natural to us, becoming in that sense more spiritually real to us. Through our faith in Him, the unseen world takes better shape, and we live for God, not for other people, “for the things which are seen are temporal, but the things which are not see are eternal”, 2 Corinthians 4 18. To us now, and in the future, this unseen and invisible world is the Kingdom of God. We can have it all now, if we will.

Some faithful saints died martyrs, some were stoned, others were beheaded, all still with hope in something unseen. They were delivered in hope “unto death for Jesus’ sake”. Job, seeing the supernatural, was again comforted and blessed. Is the circumstance of Job receiving the blessings again, and having it recorded for us, so that we might have a glimpse as well? The record of Job’s new understanding is a testimony to God, and to us, of the unseen, unreal, unnatural supernatural perspective, a foretaste of a spiritual future we can hardly grasp.

It is in those flashes of light, like this restoration of Job, and the resurrection of Jesus, we can see meaning for us. It is the glimpse of a golden future where there are the signs of God and the world He wants. When we see a good deed or a blessing done for us, or for another, we glimpse the presence of God. Those are the spiritual blessings which we can expect. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied, more than all men. But to have hope in the future, when this life is hard to grasp and full of unresolved misery, the future hope is the only way forward. If we do not have that hope, we have no hope.