Dear Friends

Now that we are in a pretty full lockdown again I’m not going to revert to a daily email (Cue:  sighs of relief from prospective recipients), but I thought an occasional extra one might be quite a good idea.
When I’m feeling ground down by events and that there is little respite in sight, my mind naturally drifts to the Book of Job.
Job spends roughly 36 chapters of the 42 chapter book bemoaning his lot to God and asking why it was all happening to him.  Here he is at the end of chapter 6
‘Teach me, and I will be silent;
make me understand how I have gone wrong.
How forceful are honest words!
But your reproof, what does it reprove?
 
Job 6:  24, 25
 
As I said Job spends a  lot of time complaining.  He can’t see any link between his behaviour and his suffering which is extreme – he has lost everything except his life.  ‘Why is this happening to me?’  is his rallying cry.  A cry which is very often heard to day.
Job has three ‘friends’ who come to ‘comfort’ him but really to convert him to their own mindset which is that he must have done something wrong, otherwise God would never have allowed this to happen.  But Job continually protests his innocence.  Good for Job!  I’m really glad that the Christian God doesn’t work by these ‘karma’ rules.  What goes round, comes round’.  Otherwise every rich person would be rich because they were blessed by God which most emphatically is not true.  Conversely, every poor person would just be a sinner.  Which may be true but what is also true is that most poor people are usually not nearly such great sinners as the rich who have such a lot more to sin with.
But the one steadfast thing that comes form the Book of Job is that God is present. Even in his apparent absence, God is present.  Fortunately he does not give us what we deserve, but he simply loves us and shares our pain.  That’s what Jesus did, sharing the pain of the refugee as his parents fled with him to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod;  sharing the pain of the unloved as his friends deserted him;  sharing the pain of the world as he died on the cross,  And allowing that identification with the suffering of the world to be transformed into hope through love.
We may not be able to explain why the world has been afflicted by the Corona virus (although many of us will have our own theories) but the Book of Job teaches us that we are not going through it alone, God is present.  As a result of this,Jesus, who has come close to us through his birth, teaches us that love always triumphs.  So if you feel like grumbling at God, or you wonder where he is, hold these thoughts in your mind and try to live the love.  It help you through the dark valley of lockdown!
A prayer of Job in the very last chapter of his book.  Try saying the words out loud yourself as a prayer to God.
‘I know that you can do all things,
and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
“Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge?”
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me, which I did not know.
Listen to John Rutter’s setting of a Celtic blessing
‘Deep peace of the running wave to you’.
Every blessing
Andrew