This blog is all about radical love, how we should radically love each other and how God radically loves us.  Believe it or not, God’s incredible love for us is exactly what this passage illustrates.

“I desire to speak to the Almighty, to argue my case with God,” Job declares in v. 3.  When you think about it, that’s rather impertinent.  Can you imagine being charged with a crime and demanding to go straight to the Supreme Court?  You’d be laughed at and denied.  But with God we can do this.  We can go straight to the highest court, if you will, and argue our case.  Job knows he is not perfect, even that he doesn’t know all the ways of God, but he still has faith: “Though he slay me, yet I have hope in him. I will surely defend my ways to his face. Indeed, this will surely be my deliverance, for no godless person would dare come before him!” (v. 15-16) Job wants to bypass his useless friends with their “proverbs of ashes” and go straight to the source to confess his faith, examine his shortcomings in God’s eyes, and make his case for salvation.  Which is what we should all do.  Now, not all of us are going to have a vision of  God come to Earth in a storm to answer our cries in person as Job does later on, but we can still do what Job does, in prayer, any day, any time.  No need to even make an appointment – God is always there, ready to listen to us.

And speaking of listening, Job really does some raging in this speech.  This is the first time Job speaks sarcastically and angrily to his friends (actually last chapter was the first time, but this chapter is a continuation of the same speech, so it still counts).  His tone towards God is less angry, but still plaintive, to be sure.  Job makes a demand of God in v. 20: “grant me these two things,” and accuses God of making Job Xyr enemy (v. 24).  It’s easy to forget, since Job is so eloquent, but not only is he in sorrow, he is in pain.  How many of us have lashed out in sorrow or pain?  Saying things we don’t really mean, or just being unable to see past our own misery?  Often, we lash out at those nearest to us.  And, just like a good friend, God doesn’t take it personally with Job.  Xe knows it is Job’s pain speaking.  Xe is not going to hold Job’s angry words against him in the end.

And there-in lies the wonder of it all.  For in the grand scheme of things, we are just windblown leaves or dry chaff, as Job points out.  I distinctly remember learning in 7th grade that if you took the whole history of Earth, from the time it was formed 4.5 billion years ago, and condensed that history into a year, then all of human history–and by that I mean the first homo-sapiens, not just recorded history–fits into the last half-hour of the last day of that year.  Now take the whole history of the galaxy, which scientists say is 14.51 billion years old, and we’re barely even a blip.  Yet for being almost nothing, God loves us.  Xe decided the world was not complete without us, and created us in Xyr image. We are fallible and fleeting, but God loves us, every single one of us.  It’s as unrealistic as us being able to love individual snowflakes as our own children, but for God, it is possible.  And that is truly awe-inspiring, and worthy of our love and thanksgiving in return.