Let’s Talk about the Book of Job…

After Psalms, I started reading Job. Job is a book that I have often wondered why God included it in the Bible. I personally don’t get much out of it, don’t underline many key scriptures, don’t even understand what is true in the counsel of Job’s “friends” and what it not. And…it is so long…

But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t read it. It is in the Bible, God’s written word to us. God must want to communicate something to us, to me, through it.

 Let’s start with the story in Chapters 1 & 2, which have enough questions of their own. A man, Job, is so “blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil” that God boasts about him to Satan.

This is where I have my first disconnect, trying to picture God stooping so low as to get into a boasting match with Satan.

But maybe that is not the picture I should get. Maybe it’s the thought that God does boast to Satan about us. I wonder if he ever said, “Have you considered my servant Martin Luther King, and all the good he is doing?” Or, “Have you considered Billy Graham and all the good he is doing?” 

Maybe God wants to boast about us, about me?

Are we giving him the “blameless and upright, one who fears God and turned away from evil” material he can boast about? 

Or on the other side, are there times when Satan comes to God and says, “See there is another one you thought was doing good, but look how they have fallen?”

Does Satan taunt God with our sin? 

Does he boast to God about his conquests? Did he show God the video of George Floyd’s death?  Burning cities? Hitler and massacres in Rwanda?

I don’t know what kind of conversations God and Satan have, and frankly, it troubles me that they talk at all. It even troubles me more if they have these kinds of conversations. God knows who wins, but Satan keeps trying…even today…to prove he is stronger than God.

The book of Job seems to be the answer to the question, who is stronger, God or Satan?

We know how it ends because we have read the end or heard the story, but obviously, Job didn’t know how it was going to end when the story started, when he was “blameless and upright, fearing God and turning away from evil.” Nor did he know that there were conversations going on between God and Satan.

We have our own stories. We don’t know the end, or even what comes next in our lives. We don’t know the conversations God and Satan are having even today.

Maybe we should read on… 

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