A Dark Veil
Scripture Reading: Job 1-2
Job is written from an omniscient point of view. The author sees and hears everything going on. There is no indication that Job had any inkling of the heavenly court scene in which he became the topic of discussion and then, later, the earthly battleground between his God and the devil. We are allowed, through the author’s storytelling, to get the inside scoop. Job has to wrestle with his suffering behind a dark veil of ignorance.
Our sufferings are not much different in that sense. I don’t mean to imply that the setup for suffering in our experience is like Job’s. I don’t know that, and that is the point. We might be able to pinpoint the earthly, physical, and human causes of our suffering, but we, like Job, are looking through a dark veil trying to see the spiritual reasons for it. We ask, “why” and the heavens are silent.
We can only answer in generalities. “We wrestle not against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers…” “Satan goes about as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour.” “The sufferings of this present world are not worthy to be compared to the glory to be revealed to us.” “For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor power, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus.”
Job doesn’t explain exactly what is going on in all of our suffering and trials. But those first chapters do remind us that something is going on in the unseen world. There is a spiritual battle taking place, one in which Jesus dealt a death blow through His death and resurrection.
Like Job, we likely don’t and won’t be able to articulate specificity when we try to answer the “why” question. What we can say by faith is Jesus won and therefore, despite these present troubles, those of us who believe in Him are being caught up in that victory with Him.
