Two quotes showed up on my Facebook memory feed from this day in 2013. They require a bit of concentration, contemplation and re-reading to grasp the point:
A Predictable God?
Before we start to look at (the book of Job), we must face up to a truth about ourselves. The "god" we think we need is faithful in ways we understand and expect, and he expresses faithfulness in the ways we choose. There is such a "god"; in fact there are many of them, constructed of small snippets of Bible verses glued together with human reason and need. This "god" always moves in predictable ways, according to the given formula. His faithfulness always feels good. It almost always ends in bankable results. But this is not the God of the Bible.
(excerpt from "Joy in the Journey" by Michael Card)
Words Without Knowledge
It is out of the whirlwind that Job first hears God say, "Who is this that darkens counsel by words without knowledge?" (Job 42:3). It is out of the absence of God that God makes himself present, and it is not just the whirlwind that stands for his absence, not just the storm and chaos of the world that knock into a cocked hat all man's attempts to find God in the world, but God is absent also from all Job's words about God, and from the words of his comforters, because they are words without knowledge that obscure the issue of God by trying to define him as present in ways and places where he is not present, to define him as moral order, as the best answer man can give to the problem of his life. God is not an answer man can give, God says. God himself does not give answers. He gives himself, and into the midst of the whirlwind of his absence gives himself. (excerpt from "Telling the Truth" by Frederick Buechner)
Photo: Neil Zeller
Text added on WordSwag app
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