Great question: Is Job blessed because things turned out well? Can he be happy–be satisfied, have peace, sing “It is well with my soul”–without the happy ending? Is Jesus blessed while he is on the cross, still unaware of what shall come? How critical to your own life–and even to the planet’s–your answer is!
Some Christians believe that after death, they, like all who die, will be subject to the judgment of God. Some do not. Some Christians believe that by suffering a cruel punishment which ought to be visited on all humans for their sins, Jesus saves Christians from hell. Some do not believe the crucifixion works like that at all. . . I do not recommend any of these positions. In the n name of Christ Jesus, I recommend the book of Job to help us feel the depth of our own calling.
If we pull the camera lens way back on the Bible stories, so that all of them fit in one big picture, the way all of Planet Earth finally fit in the lens of a moonwalker’s camera many decades ago; if we pull so far back that the particular stories seem like Italies and Indias did to the spacemen, yet so clearly part of something bigger, what is that bigger thing, bigger than any single story, bigger even than all of them together, yet present and full in every single one of them?
Only Tamar is a true agent in this great drama. Judah merely acts on his fears and desires, like any creature. Only Tamar intends the future of all Judah—and she is a Canaanite.
The struggle is a mystery. You cannot force the fight to make yourself grow. It is strange grace to be given such a night and such a fight and such sight as comes with the rising of the dawn. The gift is offered far more often than it is accepted. It can come through the veil of any crisis—at work, in health, in jail …
“The holy roller-coaster” is a handle I give to my Old Testament students to set the history of Israel clearly in mind. Spread across some 1500 years, that history has four peaks of great favor separated by three calamities for the whole people. As this undulating wave forms on a blackboard on the first day of class, I often ask my students what the big picture calls to mind. “A roller-coaster” says one. Eventually, from a deeper place, someone says: “My life.”
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