the Answer we've all been waiting for

Today in the One Year Bible, we read the final chapters of Job, from 40:1-42:17. God comes to Job and gives him the answer he's been looking for the entire book. God gives him the answer, not just to HIS questions, but to all of ours, as well. And He shows him, and us, that we have really been asking the wrong questions all along. But the question we SHOULD have been asking, He answers in full.

First, He starts off by telling him that He's heard his questions, which is amazing enough all by itself. God hears us, even in our foolishness. He hears our prayers, even when our prayer is doubting His goodness and His grace. He heard Job's prayers, Job's questions, and now He has a few questions of His own. God comes and asks His questions, and Job is speechless. Job finds himself in the same place that St Thomas Aquinas found himself - seeing all of his former works as rubbish, as so much straw. Job says he takes back everything that he said.

The reason he does is because God Himself is the answer to all of his questions. When he sees God face to face, he realizes that all of his questions are silly and stupid and immature. God is the answer to the meaning of life - which is what Job was trying and failing to ask all along.

In the picture above, Pilate asks Jesus, "What is truth?" And Jesus says nothing. But He answers his question with Himself. The answer to Pilate's question is standing right in front of him. Jesus Himself is the truth that Pilate has been looking for all of his life.

So finally, we see Job get his answer. The Answer to life, the universe, and everything. And once Job gets that straight, God gives him even more health, wealth, and family than he had before. Jesus makes the same bold promise to us, today. When we seek money and fame and happiness and health, we will miss all of them and heaven, too. But when we seek first His kingdom, we find His kingdom. And then He gives us all of the other stuff on top of that. Some in this life, mostly in the life to come.

Many people see the theodicy (how can an all powerful, all knowing, perfectly good God exist when there is suffering in the world?) as a reason not to believe that God exists. God answers that question... by existing. By not just being true, but being Truth itself. The answer to any question, if it isn't a lie, is the truth, right? And Jesus is the ultimate Truth, the answer to every question worth asking.

God, thanks for being.