By David ReayThursday 30 Aug 2018LifeWords DevotionalsFaithReading Time: 2 minutes
Read Job 42:1-3
1 Then Job replied to the Lord:
2 “I know that you can do anything,
and no one can stop you.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that questions my wisdom with such
ignorance?’
It is I—and I was talking about things I knew nothing about,
things far too wonderful for me. (NLT)
The writer Henri Nouwen once said that “ministry is the profession of fools and clowns telling everyone who has ears to hear and eyes to see that life is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be entered into.” He has a point.
Many of us would love to know the answers to all the puzzles of life. To get things sorted out, to have the ways of God comprehensively explained to us. But some things remain stubbornly outside our scope of understanding. Such as the inner workings of our God himself, as Job reminds us.
That book concludes with Job getting no answers to the problems of suffering but a renewed promise of God’s powerful presence. That was enough for Job and has to be enough for us. It seems we can live with not grasping everything as long as we can grasp the companionship of a God who cares for us.
Life is full of mess and mystery. As helpers of others, as leaders of ministries, it is not our job to tidy up the mess and explain the mystery. It is our task to enable others to live boldly and creatively with the mess and the mystery. Ultimately, we long for God himself, not answers.
Blessings
David Reay