Job 19:25 “I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth.”
Job was a righteous man, but found all his blessings wrenched away from him – his health, his wealth, and his children. Amidst conflicting accusations from his so-called friends, he knew how to wrestle with ambiguity, whilst clinging to the certainty of God’s sovereignty. “I know that my Redeemer lives… And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God… How my heart yearns within me!” (v25-27)
U2’s Bono once said: “Belief and confusion are not mutually exclusive; I believe that belief gives you a direction in the confusion. But you don’t see the full picture. That’s the point. That’s what faith is – you can’t see it. It comes back to instinct. Faith is just up the street. Faith and instinct, you can’t just rely on them. You have to beat them up. You have to pummel them to make sure they can withstand it, to make sure they can be trusted.”
Has your faith been pummeled, like Job’s? If you’ve followed Christ for any length of time, your earlier certainties will no doubt have been at the very least seriously shaken and challenged. Our self-assured dogmas are easily maintained until death, sickness, or some other impostor rocks our tidy conclusions. Maybe as we move towards spiritual maturity, we come to the same conclusion as Job that it’s less about possessions, order and success, and more about an ability to live with uncertainty, loss and mess?
Professor Matt Cartmill quipped: “As an adolescent I aspired to lasting fame, I craved factual certainty, and I thirsted for a meaningful vision of human life – so I became a scientist. This is like becoming an archbishop so you can meet girls!”
Lord, grant me the certainty of Job as I live out life’s ambiguities in my faith journey today. Amen!
Leave a Reply