Job 38 | Wayfarer

Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said:
“Who is this that obscures my plans
    with words without knowledge?
Brace yourself like a man;
    I will question you,
    and you shall answer me.
Job 38:1-3 (NIV)

For some reason, I’ve always gotten the role of Master of Ceremonies (M.C.). It started in high school when I was asked to do the P.A. announcements over the school intercom each morning, then went on to be Master of Ceremonies M.C. at the Homecoming and other all-school assemblies, which led to being the P.A. announcer at athletic events. It never really stopped. Through college and to this day I regularly get asked to M.C. different events. The reality is that officiating a wedding or funeral is, in essence, being an M.C.. I enjoy doing it. As a result, I’ve learned a lot about doing this over the decades.

There is a protocol for traditional, formal events (even though traditions have waned a lot in my lifetime). One such protocol is that the most “important” person on the program always speaks last. It is a position of honor. The most important person gets the last word. Of course, that is dependent on the event planner’s definition of who is the most “important.”

I once had the opportunity to attend the President’s annual Prayer Breakfast in Washington D.C. back in the early 1990s. The guest speaker was Mother Theresa, but the place of honor as the final speaker of the event went to President Clinton. It was a rare, awkward moment in which I got to observe the Kingdom of God and an empire of this world collide. I’d never seen President Clinton like I observed him that morning. To this day, I believe that if you asked the former President he would agree that all honor that morning should have gone to the diminutive, soft-spoken nun from Calcutta. Every one in the room knew it. It was a living parable of Jesus’ teaching about where treasure and things of eternal “importance” reside.

In today’s chapter, we finally reach the place of honor in the Job Story. Job has spoken. His three friends Eli the elder, Bill, and Z have spoken. Eli the younger then did his know-it-all bit. A scattered thunderstorm now suddenly blows in and God speaks to Job from amidst the storm.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself contemplating this simple truth which is repeated throughout the Great Story. God always holds the place of honor. God always has the last Word. It happens in the Job story. Jesus taught it incessantly. John’s Revelation loudly proclaims it. As a disciple of Jesus, I believe it with my whole heart. God will have the final Word.

How then should I live, think, speak, and act this day?

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

“Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades?
    Can you loosen Orion’s belt?
Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons
    or lead out the Bear with its cubs?
Do you know the laws of the heavens?
    Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth?”
Job 38:31-33 (NIV)

God finally weighs in on the debate between Job and his friends, and He immediately puts Job on the witness stand for questioning. He tells Job, “Brace yourself like a man,” and then the cross-examination begins. God starts a long litany of questions. Today’s chapter is a cosmic tour of creation, astronomy, geology, meteorology, and physics as God asks Job to verify where he was when it all began and what power or authority he has over any of it.

Last week there was a fascinating article on the pages of the Wall Street Journal by Eric Metaxas regarding ways in which science is beginning to understand just how miraculous our existence in the universe really is. When I was young, Carl Sagan and his documentary Cosmos were all the rage. Sagan argued that there were only two simple things needed for life to exist on another planet: The right kind of star and a planet that is a certain distance from that star. Fast forward 40 years and scientists now realize that you need more than two things, and the list now stands at 200 parameters which must be perfectly met. In fact, the parameters must be so perfectly met that the odds of our existence on this Earth defy common sense. Metaxas writes:

Fred Hoyle, the astronomer who coined the term “big bang,” said that his atheism was “greatly shaken” at these developments. He later wrote that “a common-sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a super-intellect has monkeyed with the physics, as well as with chemistry and biology . . . . The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Theoretical physicist Paul Davies has said that “the appearance of design is overwhelming” and Oxford professor Dr. John Lennox has said “the more we get to know about our universe, the more the hypothesis that there is a Creator . . . gains in credibility as the best explanation of why we are here.”

For the record, I despise the evolution versus creation debate that seems to incessantly rage in our country. Thirty-five years of wandering through and studying God’s Message has led me to conclude that it is an epic story. In fact, I believe it to be the Great Story which spawns all great stories. God’s message, I have personally come to discover, is not a science text book. I think it silly to confuse the two.

This does not mean that the Great Story is a work of fiction. Quite the opposite. It is fascinating to me that genetic science has proven that we all came from the same woman whom the scientists appropriately dubbed Eve, and that scientists are now beginning to realize that our very existence so defies the odds as to be miraculous. God’s Message points us to these basic truths in beautiful, literary form without explaining the science or intricacies of them. I have concluded that God’s Message is not about answering the minute details of how we came to be, but about leading us to answer the most important, eternal questions of why we came to be.

Which leads us all back to Job’s side, bracing ourselves to answer the Creator’s questions.