Day 18 - Wondrous Works

Reading: Job 38:4-11

The past year has been a terrible year of loss for many people – particularly, loss of work. In a country with an unemployment rate of greater than 23 percent, everyone is touched by lack of work and its effects. Because we are made to be active, being cut off from work can lead to depression, frustration, alienation, and feeling that we lack purpose.

These feelings not only occur through loss of a particular occupation but also through loss of any aspect of our lives through which we find meaning and purpose. Often in such situations of loss, we compare ourselves to Job. In Chapter 1 of Job we watch Job lose his family, his economic sustenance, his means of transport, and his health. He loses virtually everything, going from someone who is prosperous in the eyes of the world, capable of working and creating a living for himself and his family, to someone cut off from prosperity, an invalid covered in boils.

Do you ever feel like Job, whether because you have lost a job, you have never been able to have a job, or because of some other lost purpose in your life? Perhaps you have a prestigious, high-powered job, but your life still feels like it’s lost direction, and your work seems separate from your faith. Do you, or does someone you know, feel as though you are sitting helplessly in ashes, disconnected from God’s direction for your work?

Much time is spent in the book of Job, searching for a reason or justification for his plight. Job and his friends sling around blame and lament the situation, which is natural, when we lose our purpose, direction, motivation, and ability in work. In Job the people go through a journeying process of re-evaluating life, purpose, relationship with God, and relationship with one another, as we must, as well!

But, as the Book of Job comes to a close, Job and Job’s friends run out of justifications, blame, and lament, just as we eventually do, and we finally hear God speak. When God speaks, God reorients Job to the work God has already done and reminds him that God will continue to be faithful in the future. He points Job to God’s past creativity, specificity, and faithfulness in creating and providing all things. He limits Job’s pride and instead proclaims that God, alone, is the one who knows all wisdom and purpose for every individual and part of creation. If God is so faithful, that may mean lost work will be restored, or it may mean, as it did in Job’s life, that forgiveness is found, new life is born, and true fullness of life is gained – perhaps not in ways that we first anticipated.

What work has God done and is God doing in your life, in the midst of loss and in the midst of gain? How might God’s work speak to you about the purposes God has for your work?

Prayer:

edited from Walter Brueggemann’s prayer, ‘We are second and you are first’ in the anthology, Awed to Heaven: Rooted in Earth.

Before our well-being, there was your graciousness,
Before our delight, there was your generosity,
Before our joy, there was your good will.
We are second, and you are first.
You are there initially with your graciousness, your generosity, your good will – and we receive from your inscrutable goodness grace upon grace, gift upon gift, life upon life.
because you are there at the beginning, at all our beginnings.
Our gratitude wells up in the midst of your constancy –
New words spoken, new children born, new vistas opened, new risks taken, new words uttered that heal.
We dare confess that in these startling break points, we glimpse your powerful care which runs beyond our capacity to manage and beyond our exhausted capacity to cope.

You…after all our best efforts, it is you, you who hold and you who break. And we are grateful. Amen.

Putting Faith into Action:

If you, or someone you know, is looking for a job currently, ask for prayer, or pray for that person, requesting reminders of God’s provision and care. Read Job, lamenting the pain of loss but also allowing yourself to be reminded of God’s constant, wondrous work in the world and in each individual life.

Living Faith Together:

Sarah Vermeer, MRMC’s new Children’s Ministries Coordinator, has now been at work at the church for approximately one month. Please pray that she remembers God’s work throughout her whole life and in the world around her, and pray that she continues to discover God’s purposes for her in this crucial ministry.

Tomorrow morning at 8:30am, the staff members of every church in this circuit of the Methodist Church will gather together to pray, share news, and encourage each other in the midst of challenges and joys. Please keep Roger, Anna, and the rest of the ministers in your prayers, as they prepare for this monthly gathering.