One
thing that just about all of us struggle with is the problem of
suffering. Why do good people suffer? Most people are
good, yet just about everyone suffers. Working with the sick I
often heard people saying to me, ‘Why has this happened to me, I
never did anyone any harm?’ It is the age old problem that
comes up for us, where we wonder whether sickness and suffering are a
punishment for something we have done wrong.
The
readings today give an interesting kind of answer to this question.
The first reading from the book of Job doesn’t seem to make a lot
of sense on its own, but the background to it is this: Job is the
just man, he represents all those who are just and try to do what it
right, but then unexpectedly everything begins to go wrong for him.
He loses all his property and money and even his children, and then
he becomes physically ill himself. Then some friends come to
console him and begin a big discussion with him. They say to
him, ‘You must have done something wrong and this is the
punishment’. But he stands firm and says he hasn’t done
anything wrong. This is how most of us react when things start
to go badly wrong. We say, ‘Why is this happening to me?
What have I done wrong?’ God so often seems to be unfair.
Eventually
Job challenges God and says ‘You are in the wrong and You shouldn’t
be doing this to me.’ At the end of the book, God answers
Job. And the answer that He gives Job is basically this: He
says, ‘Who are you to question me?’ He says to Job, ‘Were
you there when I created the universe? Can you understand all
the mysteries of creation?’ What God is saying to us through
this book is this: We cannot understand these things, because they
are beyond us, but the Lord asks us to trust him.
Often
God 'tests' us through suffering, not in the sense of seeing if we are
good enough, but in the sense of making us stronger in our faith,
just as you would push an athlete in training to make him or her stronger,
or indeed the way you encourage your children to do something better,
even though they may resist at first. You are helping them to
grow. God is also helping us to grow.
It
is interesting that at the end of the book God also restores to Job
everything that He had lost and gives him back much more than he had
initially. It is a way of calling us to trust in God and
reminding us that God is just and will not let us down, but we must
hang on.
The
Gospel relates to this too. When Jesus stands up and orders
the wind and the sea to be calm, to the astonishment of the
disciples, the forces of nature obey him. He is showing them
and us that He is master of all things, even the forces of nature. The Lord knows what He is doing.
All things are subject to God and so the Lord continually asks us to
trust him. That is why He says, ‘Why are you so frightened?
How is it that you have no faith?’ God is saying, ‘Of
course I know what is going on, but you must trust me.’ None
of these events happened by accident. All of them teach us
something.
We
often can’t explain the things that happen to us and we often won’t
have good answers for those cynical, but it doesn’t matter. What
we have to do is trust and believe that the Lord is with us and knows
what He is doing.
‘Who
can this be? Even the wind and the sea obey him.’
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