Job's Other Children.

While he was still speaking, yet another messenger came and said, “Your sons and daughters were feasting and drinking wine at the oldest brother’s house, when suddenly a mighty wind swept in from the desert and struck the four corners of the house. It collapsed on them and they are dead, and I am the only one who has escaped to tell you!” Job 1:18-19

Job is consoled at the end of his story, by 10 more children, Seven sons and three beautiful daughters. He lives to 140, and sees his descendants to the 4th generation. His riches are restored and he was blessed more by God, in the post disaster part of his life, than he had been in the first part. But I wonder, if at 139, bouncing his great, great grandchildren on his weakened knees, he didn't spare a thought for the children that he lost in that awful storm. I suspect that no matter what came after, nothing could have replaced what he had lost. Grief is like that. It never goes entirely. It kind of reshapes you, it becomes livable but it is still present.

I have always struggled to find comfort in the children that Job receives after the event. It seems to me, (taking aside that these were real children, real human beings with their own individual attributes and personalities and ways of relating to their Father), that their presence in the story just rubs salt in the wounds. I am a father. I am sure it doesn't work like that. You love each child on their own merit, and sometimes without much merit. But it seems to me that we are being asked by the story, to simply accept that everything is okay again. And what about those Children? What had they done to deserve to be wiped out like that?

At some fundamental level my response to this is the same as it would be to those deaths of school children in Oklahoma this week, the same as it would be to any children lost in natural disasters, or any adults for that matter (and Jobs children were grown, that much is clear by the nature of the activity they were involved in at the time of their demise). My response is, 'its not fair!'

But the thing I realised about the story of Job is that it is the story of Job. Profound, hey? What I mean is, ultimately, as far as the story goes, it is not about them. That does not mean, that if they were real flesh and blood people, that God did not care about them, or that he had simply chalked them up as collateral damage. It means that that is another story, and one that is not told in scripture. The story we are told is about Job and not his children. It is about how we respond to suffering, and how we maintain our integrity when all the anchors of reasoning and emotional connection to the Almighty are ripped out of the ground in a single moment.

Job's story raises many questions about the origins of evil and causes of suffering. Job mostly maintains his integrity but none the less, in the awe inspiring end to the long explorations of these themes, God declares himself to Job. He says

Who is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge?

Firstly it needs to be observed that whenever we speak about these things, we are lacking in a knowledge of what we speak of. We only get one very limited perspective. We see in part, only. God then, through a series of questions compares his own achievements to Job's (and really humanity's) own. It is really his way of making the distinction clear. We are not dealing with another man here. This is the Almighty, maker of the universe. Essentially, who are we to question him?

Not exactly the comfort we are looking for but, at some deeper level I think it might just be. God is enshrouded in mystery. Perhaps that despite an all powerful and benevolent creator there is such suffering is the greatest mystery we will ever have to face. Our impotence in the face of it is quite humbling. Perhaps we don't need answers, perhaps we need acceptance. If God was not loving though, this would be a terrible state of affairs. It is only when we understand the love of God that we can start to trust him, that he knows what he is doing, even when we are clueless and blinded with grief and rage. He never lost control. Not once. Sometimes the things that we must face are crippling but If God is redeeming the world to himself, at least, ultimately, there is a purpose in it. It is not needless, senseless suffering. It is a mystery but it is not without reason, nor apart from divine love.

And it is not the story of those whose time is done, be they seven or seventy. The question is what are we to do, how are we to respond?