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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion February 5, 2006 God Speaks from a whirlwind |
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Frontline Devotion for Sunday, February 5, 2006 by Susan Hill
It wasn’t too long ago that fundamentalist preacher, Pat Robertson, opined
that Ariel Sharon’s stroke was a result of his disobedience of God’s command
to preserve the biblically confined borders of Israel. Another day
Robertson warned the citizens of Dover PA that God might abandon them in the
face of future disaster because their school board voted to eliminate the
teaching of the “intelligent design” theory of creation in their public
school science classes. In a sense, Robertson’s remarks fall into the same
category as Job’s and his friends’ in today’s text. Out of suffering and
self-centeredness, Job and his friends and Mr. Robertson have interpreted
God’s plan for good in terms of God’s retribution. Their struggle for
spiritual understanding is honest, but in the viewpoint of Job’s writer, they
have forgotten God’s covenant with God’s people and have assumed God’s
vengeance against human frailty rather than God’s essential desire for human
good. God’s anger and disappointment emerge poetically in the Book of Job as
God storms at Job in furious response to the man’s adversarial questions.
How many times have we been like Job, his friends or even Pat Robertson?
We want to interpret our lives in relationship to God, but we focus on doubts
rather than on God’s promises. When disappointments come, we ask why God
has allowed this to happen. Suffering seems pointless and fruitless – even
vindictive. We feel abandoned or punished and may relinquish our faith in
response to God’s apparent imposition of suffering.
Job’s writer envisions God’s overwhelmingly mighty response to such thinking.
God responds to human plight, but God is impatient with questions that doubt
God’s justice. God reminds Job of God’s initial acts of love and beauty.
God created, God provided. In God’s response, however, there is no reference to
Job’s plight or Job’s guilt but only a reaffirmation of God’s loving gift of
creation. God does not condemn Job and thus validates him. Our hope is that God
will also reenter our lives – maybe through one of life’s most chaotic storms –
to reconfirm God’s relationship of love and purity with us.
Prayer:
God of love and mercy, we reconfirm our faith in your goodness as we read this
story of Job and his suffering. Help us to bear the suffering of our lives
in confidence that you have created us and our world for good. Revisit us
to remind us of your power and your commitment. Amen.
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All are welcome to join and share in our Devotional Ministry on the "Frontlines" of the world. Frontline Devotions are sent via email daily. Sign up by clicking on the box to the left. Pastor Dave welcomes feedback. Contact him at pastordave@goodshepherdonline.org. |
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