So here is an adaptation of the second sermon I preached at Inlet Community Church this month in a series on snow.
Job was a wildly successful businessman, prosperous in every way. This from the beginning of the book that
bears his name, “He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven
thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, and five
hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people
of the East” (Job 1:2-3). This is said
straight-faced, without any hedging. He
was the greatest, bar none.
And
then he loses it all in a day.
-
The 500 oxen and 500 donkeys are stolen by the vicious Sabeans and the
attending servants are killed.
-
The 7,000 sheep are burned up by fire falling from the sky and the attending
servants are incinerated.
-
Chaldean raiding parties sweep away all the 3,000 camels and the attending
servants and struck down with swords.
In
three waves, all his livestock is wiped away, along with workforce. Material loss is compounded by familial loss. All his sons and daughters are feasting
together at the oldest brother’s house, when a stiff wind causes the house to
collapse and all of them are killed. Stripped bare, he declares, “naked I came
from my mother’s womb, and naked I will depart.” (Job 1:21). It gets worse.
All that naked flesh is afflicted with boils, pussy and painful skin
lesions. Physical discomfort, emotional
upheaval, material devastation.
But
despite all this tragedy, he refuses to reject God. He will curse the day of his birth, with
verbose eloquence (the whole of chapter 3), but he will not curse God. Even at the prodding of his wife to do so.
But
while he won’t reject God, but he will ask why.
Again and again.
- Why did I
not perish at birth, and die as I came from the womb (3:11)
- Why is
light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul (3:20)
- Why do you
hide your face and consider me an enemy (13:24)
- Why do you
not pardon my sins and forgive my sins (7:21)
- Why do the wicked live on, growing old and
increasing in power? (21:7)
- Why
does the Almighty not set times for judgment? Why must those who know him look in vain for such days? (24:1)
He
may not raise his fist in response to this slurry of misery, but he will
scratch his head. He wants to make sense
of all this. For if there is no sense,
then we are left with nonsense. And to
remain loyal to a God of nonsense is just one last heaping teaspoon of nonsense. He longs for an explanation.
And
don’t we all. When things don’t work out
the way we expected. When we get
terrible news. When it seems like those
with no regard for God are living carefree lives while we who strive to walk in
obedience are beat down with misfortune.
Why? It doesn’t seem fair. We long for an explanation. Is there sense in this or is it all just a
pile of nonsense?
Because
if I were writing the script, I would never write in “get a flat tire” or “bang
my knee on the corner of the bed” or “bite my lip in the same place for the
fourth time”, or “fix the leaky toilet.”
And if I’m not inclined to include these little “c” crisis into my
script, you can bet I’m not going to write any capital “C” Crises into the storyline
– terminal disease, miscarriage, tragic accident, divorce, financial ruin,
depression, adultery, job termination. If
I were writing the script it would be all green lights and blue skies. And yet I look out the window and the sky is
ashen, dreary gray. Why?
Job
asks why. Finally, God intervenes with
an answer. But it turns out he answers a
different question. Instead of getting
ensnared by the question of why he responds to the question of who. For four chapters (Job 38-41) God lays out a torrent
of questions of his own, forceful in their delivery. The two sections of his response are
introduced with the same knee-knocking formula – “Brace yourself like a man and
I will question you and you shall answer me” (38:3, 40:7). He goes back to his work in creation and touches
on sunrise, constellations, tides, rainfall, the foodchain.
In
this midst of this, snow makes an appearance.
Job 38:22 “Have you entered the storehouses of the snow or seen the
storehouses of the hail?”
All
this snow, vast and powerful, delicate and artfully sculpted, is at his
bidding. He determines when and where
the snow will fall. He has this immense storehouse
of snowflake masterpieces that he grabs by the handful and scatters throughout
the earth.
As
it says in Psalm 147:16 “He spreads the snow like wool and scatters the frost
like ashes.” What can cripple us, shutting down the
interstate, delaying flights, causing power outages and treacherous travel, is
just handful of snow scooped up from his storehouse and flung through the
sky. I labor in the removal, doing the
back breaking work of clearing my driveway.
But there is no labor in the delivery. My labor contrasted with his
ease.
An
avalanche begins with a failure in the snowpack. The angel of the slope is usually somewhere
around 38 degrees, a point at which accumulation is extremely unstable. Most often, slides begin with additional
snowfall adding weight to the snowpack or the sun causing snowmelt compromising
the stability of the snow. Sometimes
other sources set the avalanche in motion – animals, skiers, seismic activity,
explosions, thunder, etc.
Whatever
the cause, load exceeds strength and the inert snowpack is set in motion. Up to a million tons of snow, traveling at
speeds of nearly 200 miles an hour with no friction to slow it down. It drives an invisible wave of air before it,
smashing everything in its path. It is
an amazingly powerful display.
But
avalanches in the macro are made up of snowflakes in the micro. And a snowflake is as delicate as an
avalanche is powerful. Each flake is a
tiny six-pointed ice sculpture, a uniquely crafted masterpiece. They can be extremely beautiful, but are
rarely admired. They are too small and
too fragile. They are easily crushed and
quickly melted.
And
this is God. He is crafting flakes with
intricate precision and then flinging them with such abandon that they will
never be appreciated for their artistry.
All
of this is intended to bring Job to this declaration in response, “Surely I
spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.”
(42:2).
We
want to know why. God suggests that a
better question is who. We need to
remember that this is a God of vast power, displayed in creation. He made all this. The fury of the snow squall, the delicacy of
the snow flake, and everything in between.
This
power in harnessed with unfathomable competence. He keeps the universe in motion and juggles
the intricacies of an immense created order without ever getting jumbled up. That same competence not only tunes the dials
of this world, it tunes the dials of my life.
I
used to have this video game as a child, in the days of Atari and
Intellivision. Two biplanes would fight
it out. The controls were quite simple –
up for up, down for down, red button to shoot.
That was it. I was pretty good –
quite a pilot.
Be
wouldn’t that be audacious if I took my expertise at this video game as an
indication that I was ready to sit in the cockpit of a real plane with its myriad
of gauges and buttons, levers and switches.
Asking
God why is akin to that. As if we with
our video game expertise could begin to understand the true complexity of the
cockpit controls. So when I’m in flight
it’s more important for me to know who’s flying the plane that to know why he
chose a particular cruising altitude. If
the pilot is trustworthy, I can leave the particulars of the flight in his
hands.
The
God who unleashes avalanches with his pinky and crafts masterpieces by the
trillions - he’s a God I can trust. And
if that question of who is settled in our minds, then the question of why, even
if left unanswered, is not so pressing. The
pilot knows how to fly this plane better then I do.
