I sat with the book of Job this morning... maybe longer than I expected to.

Maybe because Job asks questions I recognize.

Why did this happen?

Why didn’t God stop it?

Why does doing the right thing not always protect us from the thing we were terrified would happen?

I think, somewhere along the way, I picked up an unspoken formula for faith.

Be good.

Keep your covenants.

Pray.

Serve.

Go to church.

Forgive.

Try again.

Do what God asks.

And then, somehow, life will be okay.

I would never have said it quite that plainly... I know better than that.

But if I look closely, I think there have been times when I expected faithfulness to buy me a certain amount of protection.

Job is challenging that in me.

He begins the story righteous and blessed. He has a family he loves, possessions, health, stability. Then suddenly, so much of it disappears.

And the question introduced at the beginning of his story caught my attention:

“Doth Job fear God for naught?”

In other words, does Job love God only because loving God has worked out well for Job?

That question followed me around this morning.

Because it turns the book of Job into something different than I thought it was.

Maybe Job isn't primarily answering, “Why do bad things happen to good people?”

In fact... it doesn't really answer that.

Instead, Job seems to be asking something much more uncomfortable:

What kind of relationship will I have with God when life stops making sense?

That is a very different question.

And perhaps a more important one.

It's easy to praise God when the prayer gets answered.

When the child comes home.

When the marriage heals.

When the diagnosis is good.

When the job works out.

When the door opens.

When everything eventually wraps itself up into a testimony we can tell on Fast Sunday.

But what about when it doesn't?

What if the prayer you have prayed a hundred times still seems unanswered?

What if you did everything you knew to do and still lost something precious?

What if you look at your life and whisper... "But God... I thought if I followed You..."

I have had those moments.

Maybe you have too.

Those are the places where our relationship with God can become painfully honest.

Because suddenly we have to confront a question we probably never meant to ask:

God, do I love You for You, or have I loved You partly because I believed You would keep certain painful things from happening to me?

That one stings a little.

I think Job would understand.

One thing I love about Job is that scripture doesn't clean him up for us.

He grieves.

He questions.

He becomes frustrated.

He says things about God that aren't completely correct. At one point... God describes some of Job's words as “words without knowledge.”

And yet, Job keeps talking.

That might be what touched me most today.

Job struggles with God, but he doesn't walk away from God.

There is a difference.

Sometimes I think we confuse faith with never having difficult questions.

Maybe we imagine the faithful response is always, "Everything happens for a reason" (how many times have I said this??), followed by a smile and a scripture.

But Job's story is messier than that.

His faith sounds more like:

I don't understand You

I don't know why this happened

I thought You would protect me from this

I am hurt

I need answers

And still... somewhere in the middle of all of that:

“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.”

That doesn't sound like shallow faith to me.

That sounds like someone who has decided the relationship is worth staying in even when he doesn't understand what is happening inside of it.

I want that kind of faith.

Not a faith that never wrestles.

A faith that keeps God inside the wrestle.

Job's friends also taught me something.

They show up when Job is suffering, and at first they do something beautiful. They sit with him.

Then they start talking.

And everything gets complicated.

They are convinced there must be an explanation for Job's pain.

Surely Job did something.

Surely God is punishing him.

Surely suffering can be neatly traced backward to some mistake.

They become so busy defending God that they stop seeing their hurting friend.

That convicted me.

Because sometimes we do this too.

Someone's marriage falls apart and we look for the reason.

A child leaves the Church and we wonder what happened in the home.

Someone becomes sick and we start suggesting diets, treatments, faith, fasting, whatever explanation helps us believe suffering is controllable.

Maybe we are trying to make ourselves feel safer.

If I can explain why this happened to you, perhaps I can make sure it doesn't happen to me.

But Job's story reminds me that suffering isn't always an equation we can solve.

Sometimes the holiest response is much simpler.

Sit down.

Listen.

Mourn.

Bring dinner.

Hold a hand.

Stay.

Maybe we don't need to explain God to someone who is hurting.

Maybe we need to help them experience a little bit of His love.

There are chapters and chapters in Job where people are trying to figure everything out.

Job speaks.

His friends speak.

Someone else speaks.

Job responds again.

It is long and repetitive and, honestly, a little uncomfortable.

And God allows all of it to remain in scripture.

That means something to me.

God doesn't seem threatened by the conversation.

He isn't frightened by Job's questions.

He doesn't disappear because Job is angry.

He lets Job wrestle.

And eventually God enters the conversation Himself.

I love that.

Maybe God would rather have my messy, tear filled, confused prayers than my silence.

Maybe He would rather hear:

I don't understand You today

than watch me slowly pull away because I believed I wasn't allowed to say it.

Perhaps faith isn't having every answer.

Perhaps faith is continuing the conversation long enough for God to teach us something we couldn't have learned any other way.

I still don't know why some things happen.

There are parts of my own story I would rewrite immediately if God handed me the pen.

There are prayers I would like answered differently.

There are losses I still don't understand.

And Job doesn't give me a tidy explanation for any of that.

Strangely, I think I am grateful.

Because maybe the greatest gift of Job isn't an answer to suffering.

Maybe it is an invitation into a deeper relationship.

One where I don't only know God as the One who gives blessings.

I begin to know Him as the One who stays when the blessing doesn't come.

The One who listens to hard questions.

The One who can handle my disappointment.

The One who meets me inside the wrestle.

The One whose character can eventually become more certain to me than my circumstances.

So perhaps today I will stop asking God to explain everything.

At least for a minute.

And instead I will ask:

Who are You becoming to me here?

What am I learning about Your character in this place?

Can I stay close even before I understand?

I think this is what Job is teaching me.

The goal was never to build a relationship with God where nothing painful happens.

The invitation is to build a relationship with God that can survive when painful things do.

And maybe... somewhere inside that relationship... we eventually find ourselves able to say the words Job did.

Not because everything is fixed.

Not because we understand.

But because we have come to know Him.

Yet will I trust in Him.