Hello
Put your spiritual dentures on, reflection on today’s Holy Nougat Is a hard chew like old fashioned toffee
“I had only heard about you before, but now I have seen you with my own eyes.” Job 42:5 NLT
Job’s comment is curious; he had not physically seen God. In fact, all he’d seen for a while was his four friends and open sores! Could his ailments be making him delirious, or was he misled? After all, no one sees God and lives!
Granted, Job was as good as dead; but his gaze was perhaps even more acute as it was no longer affixed to the natural. Rather, his conversation with God had moved from the superficial to the profoundly sacred. God’s response to Job was not likely to be what he wanted to hear; but had the profound effect of allowing him an unobstructed view of the God Job THOUGHT he knew.
Almost all Job’s preconceived notions about God were thrown out the window. This, despite his almost fanatic approach to God prior to his prolonged season of undergoing. Job used to do everything in his power to please God; yet he never KNEW God until tried in the crucible of suffering!
But, having persevered, Job beheld God’s glory. We don’t know whether his friends did; but Job saw God for who God is, in that moment of Truth. We think of Moses, Hagar, the Hebrew young men, Esther, David and even Jacob, who truly met God in the furnace; and realize that for many of us, it is adversity (or the threat thereof) which removes the veil from our eyes.
What would it take for us to TRULY see God? Has the Lord been trying valiantly to get our attention? Could our momentary light affliction be an opportunity to see God when we finally shift focus? Can we handle God’s “non-response” to our questions?
Breathe through the heats of our desire
your coolness and your balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire,
speak through the earthquake, wind and fire,
O still small voice of calm,
O still small voice of calm!
In Christ’s love and grace . . .
