This Week

This week at praxis...Something to Cry About!

Then Yahweh 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? 
Can you lift up your voice to the clouds, 
so that a flood of waters may cover you? 
Can you send forth lightnings, so that they may go 
and say to you, 'Here we are'? Who has put wisdom 
in the inward parts, or given understanding to the mind? 
Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? 
Or who can tilt the waterskins of the heavens, 
when the dust runs into a mass and the clods cling together? 
Can you hunt the prey for the lion, or satisfy 
the appetite of the young lions,  when they 
crouch in their dens, or lie in wait in their covert?  
ho provides for the raven its prey, when its young ones 
cry to God, and wander about for lack of food?
 
----Job 38:1-7, 34-41


 Job, by his insistence on bringing his case before God, 
even without hope of a hearing, had stood his ground 
and thus created the very obstacle that forced God 
to reveal his true nature.
				
----Carl G. Jung, Answer to Job


When I was young, I said to God, "God, tell me the mystery 
of the universe." But God answered, "That knowledge is for 
me alone." So I said, "God, tell me the mystery of the peanut." 
Then God said, "Well, George, that's more nearly your size." 

---- George Washington Carver


Life is a tragic mystery. We are pierced and driven by 
laws we only half understand, we find that the lesson we 
learn again and again is that of accepting heroic helplessness. 
Some uncomprehended law holds us at a point of contradiction 
where we have no choice, where we do not like that which we love, 
where good and bad are inseparable partners impossible 
to tell apart, and where we -- heart-broken and ecstatic, 
can only resolve the conflict by blindly taking it into our hearts. 
This used to be called being in the hands of God. 
Has anyone any better words to describe it? 				

---- Florida Scott-Maxwell, "The Measure of my Days"


Train us, Lord, to fling ourselves upon the impossible, 
for behind the impossible is your grace and your presence; 
we cannot fall into emptiness. The future is an enigma,
our road is covered by mist, but we want to go on giving ourselves,
because you continue hoping amid the night and weeping tears 
through a thousand human eyes.
  
--- Luis Espinal, a priest murdered in Bolivia


The questions Yahweh inexorably pursued have revealed to 
Job the freedom and love that permeate God's plan. 
As a result, Job can speak of hitherto unsuspected 
facets of reality that he does not fully understand 
but that are not therefore any less real. He is not saying 
that he has acquired any further information from all that 
God has said; on the contrary, these wonders too are beyond 
his ability to grasp completely, but he has indeed begun to
understand, to acquire the needed discernment. He still has 
a long road to travel. Previously, when he moved within the 
framework of the doctrine of retribution, he did not have 
any journey at all ahead of him because at bottom everything 
was (supposedly) understood, and he was already at the goal. 
This is no longer the case; he sees things differently now. 
God is present to him as an abiding newness.

----Gustavo Gutierrez, On Job: God-talk and the Suffering of the innocent


 Questions:

• Job has complained to God of his situation, and demanded to hear a response. 

• Given God's response as quoted here, do we get to complain to God?

• Job moves to a place of peace after this encounter 
  	(which goes on for four chapters.)  
  	How does this response of God, this encounter with the mystery 
  	of God, lead to greater peace and discernment?

• What is the point between whining and appropriate complaint with God?

• Which of the readings gives you hope? Which do you respond to?  

• How do you make sense of suffering, in the face of the mystery of God?