BRACE YOURSELF

It takes courage to face and acknowledge our human limitations, including the many things we don’t know and don’t understand. After thirty-five chapters of Job’s protests and his friends’ arguments, God spoke. Job had been pressing God to get a hearing; now God responded with questions of His own. God’s first words invited Job to brace himself and to admit what he didn’t know—but also simply to have the courage to hear directly from God after so much arguing about Him and to have the courage to recognize his own smallness in comparison with the majesty and power of God. Notably, God did not answer many of the questions Job and his friends had been wrestling with. Instead, He pointed to the wonders of the created world and the universe beyond. He pointed out the power and wisdom, insight, and oversight with which He created and cared for the world, challenging Job with example after example of things he did not understand and could not control. But even more significantly, God simply spoke.

Ultimately, God’s response to Job’s urgent questions was His presence—the reality that He had seen and heard Job’s predicament and protest.

Even as He gently rebuked Job and less gently rebuked Job’s friends—thus giving some resolution to their arguments—His presence was affirmation in itself.

Job understood this message, and he had the courage to respond. “You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my counsel without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3). In this sense, courage is an element of trust. Only when we are brave enough to admit our limitations will we allow ourselves to trust the One who made us, who made it all, and who has already seen and heard all our questions and doubts, even those we can barely bring ourselves to admit.