My children (5 yrs and 2.5 years currently) and I love to watch the Wisdom Series of videos from the Bible Project. We've watched them all but come back to these three the most (see links below). Just when I think they are over their heads (some of it is over mine) and they are just watching them to watch some kind of videos, they ask good questions that let me know they are taking it in.
Each time, we watch the Proverbs video, then Ecclesiastes, then Job. Job gets the most questions: "Why did Job think God wasn't holding him?" "Why is he suffering?" "What is innocent?" "Did his wife die too?" However, each time what strikes me most is a key phrase from the narrator: "And God comes."
In the form of a storm, never answering Job's demand directly, but God comes. When I pare down my walk with God to it's most simple form, THIS is what I'm most grateful for: He is the God Who Comes.
Like Mark Buchannan says in The Holy Wild, "God doesn't always make sense of our sad or bland lives, our calamities and banalities, but...keeps meeting us in the thick and thin of those lives."
In each of the stories of the men and women in the Bible, this is a thread woven from Adam and Eve (God came and called to them), Abraham (numerous times), Moses and the elders (who dined with Him), Sarah (changing her name), Hagar (twice), Habakkuk (where God tells him the righteous live by their faith) to Christ, who comes in bodily form. Then to the Apostles and others and even today.
I think of my own experience in my lowest time where He answered me from the passenger seat of my car. Or my friend's husband, to whom God appeared while he was showering and who immediately was converted, walking away from everything. Or my father at St. George while we were on vacation.
I read a story recently of Christians in Nigeria about to be slaughtered by Muslim terrorists and God appeared to them, telling them to hold strong to their faith. Then, when hope was almost lost, suddenly the guards ran away screaming. The children said they saw men in white fighting for them.
I don't know why He appears some times, speaks at times, and is silent other times. I won't commit theodicy by attempting to defend God's character in the face of incredible evil or suffering. I simply know this: He comes.
To the mother suffering the loss of her child. The father facing lung cancer. The teenager who said "No" but the boy didn't listen. The child abused. The fatherless, motherless—innocent. Sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. Shutting the mouths of lions or friends-who-are-terrible-friends (like Job's).
Maybe His coming is like a storm or a warrior. Or maybe in the cool of the garden. Or burning bush. Or gentle lover (Song of Solomon), father (Psalm 68:5), brother (Proverbs 18:24), mother, savior.
Regardless, this my heart rests in: He comes. Like He said to Habakkuk, we live by our faith. Faith is resting in the God who comes however He chooses and whenever He chooses, even if it looks like He won't make it in time.
Grace bring us to know God intimately so we can rest in faith.
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