The Blueberry Pie

1 Then the Lord answered Job from the whirlwind:
2 Who is this darkening counsel with words lacking knowledge? 3 Prepare yourself like a man; I will interrogate you, and you will respond to me.
4 Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundations? Tell me if you know. 
5 Who set its measurements? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring tape on it? 6 On what were its footings sunk; who laid its cornerstone, 7  while the morning stars sang in unison and all the divine beings shouted?
8 Who enclosed the Sea behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, 9 when I made the clouds its garment, the dense clouds its wrap, 10 when I imposed my limit for it, put on a bar and doors 11 and said, “You may come this far, no farther;  here your proud waves stop”?
12 In your lifetime have you commanded the morning,  informed the dawn of its place 13 so it would take hold of earth by its edges and shake the wicked out of it? 14 Do you turn it over like clay for a seal, so it stands out like a colorful garment? 15 Light is withheld from the wicked, the uplifted arm broken.
Job 38:1-15 CEB

(I love the book of Job! Many of my major shifts in theology happened while working through the text. )


There are a few things we should know about this book:

1. Job is blameless the entire time. There is nothing he has physically done to deserve what he is getting.
2. The Accuser is of the belief that anyone, if pushed far enough, would turn from God. Job, as a blameless person, is a test subject. 
3. I personally believe this book is a God given allegory, meant to be seen as wisdom literature, not a history of an actual person. If it was meant to be taken literally, God is terrible. A blameless person is punished to see if he'll crack. Family members are killed for no other reason than Job hadn't been pushed far enough. God can actually be seen in the wrong in this book. (Some believe Elihu's rebuke was added to justify God's actions.) There is no apology or explanation from God once we get to the divine speech.  
4. It is the friends, not Job, at the end the book that need redemption.  I find this interesting because there are things they say which are technically correct.  I find their fault lies in how they dealt with someone in the middle of loss. Frankly, we say some stupid things to people dealing with loss.
5. God's not much better, but God gets away with it because, well... God.

So when we get to the divine speech we shouldn't be looking to God for crisis care. We are just not going to find it. What we are going to find is a verbal version of what happens to many coming out of crisis. To better understand, I'm going to use a blueberry pie as an example.

Before crisis, Job had a very self-centered view of the world. (Not selfish. I've previously explained why it's important to know the difference.) It's like this: To him the world was a beautiful dining room table, and he was a homemade blueberry pie, sitting smack dab in the middle.

When God gets to Job in the divine speech, this is basically what is told to Job: 

You may be a blueberry pie, but you are not in the center of my table. There is so much more on that table than just you. There's the roast, and the gravy no one likes but I made with love. There are the utensils, plates, and bowls. More than that, the table is not all there is. The table is part of the dining room, which is part of a house, which is part of a neighborhood. You are a blueberry pie, and I love you, but you are just a small piece of the big picture.

God, in the divine speech, moves Job from a self-centered point of view, to see more than himself. In the Book of Job, it is done with sarcasm and blunt force words. When we are personally making the transition, it can happen all at once, or slowly over a long period of time. No matter how it happens, it isn't until we meet our God moment that we are capable to enter into a new stage of life, better than the life we lost.

Have you had your own God moment? What was it like?

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