Day 146 – March 11, 2024: Job 11-14 and Romans 9-10

It is in these chapters where Job famously declares that he is willing to defend himself before. Not as if he were perfect or as if there is no guilt or sin in him, but rather as someone as he says that is not suffering as a result of his own work, but rather as this being the work of God irrespective of his life of righteousness or sin. Clearly speaking, this is God at work here and not his work that has put him in this untenous, impossible position. One of his friends, again, blames him and calls him a fool for not recognizing that God was punishing him for his deeds. This is what causes him to say: I will argue my case with God. In seminary we had a mock trial of Job vs. God where Job goes to court and pleads his case against God. Needless to say, Job loses.

Romans strikes a similar vein where we find in 9:20 where Paul asks us a simple but pointed question: Who are you to argue with God. That is question we can ask of Job. Who are we to wonder what God was really up to? I guess once you lose all of your livelihood and your children and everything of value you somehow get a sense that you might have a right to question just a little bit. Yeah, even then we are clay and God is the potter. No matter how much God has shaped us and molded us and brought us back down to nothing, we are still the clay. That never changes.