Have it firsthand

Job 42:5 I admit I once lived by rumors of you, now I have it firsthand -- from my own eyes and ears.

What answers all of Job's complaints, dissipates his anger and finally shuts him up is the direct experience of the Presence of God. All the time that he had lived before his trials as a good man, a righteous man, he was following the rules, but he never experienced God's presence,so it was all at some remove, all as if by rote. Now he sees and hears, he knows God, doesn't just know about God. And that makes all the difference. In Getting Involoved With God, Old Testament scholar Ellen Davis points out the transformation that Job has gone through by noting the differences in how he is presented as a father. In the last paragraph of the book, which one could easily skim past without taking much notice, she points out two unusual things. One, though none of Job's sons are named, his three daughters are, and the names are wild and fanciful. Two, he leaves his daughters an inheritance along with his sons. These are acts almost of recklessness in a highly patriarchal culture, certainly against the norm and against the grain for the "respectable" culture of his day. Just the fact of having children, having lost all his previous children in one terrible accident, demonstrates Job's new willingness to live with risk. As Professor Davis puts it, "Job, this man of integrity who was once so careful, fearful of God and of the posssible sins of his children, becomes at the last freewheeling, breaking with custom to honor daughters alongside sons, bestowing inheritances and snappy names. The inspiration and model for this wild style of parenting is, of course, God the Creator. Job learned about it when God spoke out of the whirlwind." Only the transformative experience of meeting the Presence, the Ultimate Mystery can account for this change in Job.

What about you? Do you live by rumors of God or by direct knowledge? Do you know about God, or do you know God? Prayer and other contemplative practices are all about being in the Presence of God, of experiencing firsthand something of God's power in our lives. This is what has made a difference in my life, has given me the experience of carrying God's peace within me, sometimes at the most difficult of times in my life. This is what transforms, gives me power to endure, even to thrive, in the face of difficulty, which inspires me to write this blog so that others might get some sense of what God's Presence might do in their lives. It's not about being perfect, or being protected from every danger, like some superstitious amulet that's supposed to ward off evil. No, it's about having the power and the presence and the fortitude to wade through the most difficult times we face without being taken over by them; it's about finding our own definition of who we are through God's grace, rather than as the victim of our circumstances; it's about resilience in the face of calamity, like the resilience of Job, who is able to start again after all he had been through, to have more children in the face of terrible loss, to risk it all for love. It is loving in the face of risk, enduring in the face of disaster, thriving in the midst of destruction that are the fruits of an active, yearned for connection with God, the true God, the Creator, the Whatever It Is that sustains us in the face of all we go through, that brought us into being and draws us to Itself through all of our days, our Alpha and Omega, our beginning and end, our Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer, our God, our loving, merciful God.

Prayer: Dear God, I am awed by Your Presence and Majesty. Help me to risk it all as I follow Your path, to offer it all to You that You may lead me to the deepest fulfillment of my soul. Amen.