job 38:1-11
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge? Gird up your loins like a man, I will question you, and you shall declare to me.

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? On what were its bases sunk, or who laid its cornerstone when the morning stars sang together and all the heavenly beings shouted for joy? “Or who shut in the sea with doors when it burst out from the womb?— when I made the clouds its garment, and thick darkness its swaddling band, and prescribed bounds for it, and set bars and doors, and said, ‘Thus far shall you come, and no farther, and here shall your proud waves be stopped’?

This text comes near the end of the book of Job.  You know the story.  In a matter of days Job loses everything: his wealth, his family, his health.  Three friends come to comfort Job, but soon they tell him that he must have done something evil for God to have inflicted so much suffering upon him.  Chapter and chapter, page after page, Job maintains his innocence.  He demands an answer from God as to why he (Job) is suffering unjustly.  Finally, in our text, God shows up—a voice from the whirlwind answers Job.  But God’s answer is not what we’d expect, and certainly not what we’d want to hear.  God seems to be telling Job that he (Job) is really only a tiny part of a vast, complex, beautiful, dizzying creation.  Job seems to take comfort in this realization that he is only dust and so perhaps his suffering does not have cosmic significance.  Would we?  (RAF)

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