Where were you?

 Perhaps at first glance at the title of this post, you are instantly brought to that popular hymn often sung on Good Friday, which asks the question, where were you when they crucified my Lord? That is a worthy question to answer, but that is not the one that we are looking into today. Instead, we are going to turn way back in time, to what is often thought to be one of the earliest written books of the Bible. All the way back to the time of Job.

Job is an interesting book of the Bible. And our question comes toward the end of the book, when God first speaks to Job. In fact, our question for today is the second question that God asks of Job as Job tries to plead his innocence before God, in the thought that God has been unjust to him. In Job 38:4, God asks Job this question. Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?

For Job, this question is the culmination of a lengthy conversation that Job had with four of his friends. Briefly, Satan presented himself before God, and God presented Job to Satan as one of his faithful followers. Satan accused God of protecting Job, and that is the only reason Job is faithful. So God grants Satan the ability to take basically everything away from Job. Then, for about 35 chapter, Job and his friends discuss what caused this calamity to come upon him. Job repeatedly stated that he had done nothing wrong, to which his friends continued to reply that God doesn't just do this to someone unless they have grievously sinned against God. Finally, Job gets to the point of saying that God was unjust to bring such calamity upon him, and that is when God finally speaks. And this question begins a series of questions from God directed toward Job.

Now, at first glance, this question may seem to be an easy one for us to consider. After all, we weren't yet in existence when God laid the foundations of the world. The only being in existence at that time was God. He spoke, and our world and universe came into being. No living things existed until a few days into creation, much less mankind, which came on day six. So, no, none of us were there.

However, this question from God to Job strikes a little bit deeper than just that. It has to deal with our idea that we know better than God what is good and right for us to endure. Let's face it, we tend to want our lives to be easy and pain-free. And we tend to think that God should react to us as a loved one does. We don't tend to put our loved ones through pain and suffering. If we did, they would rightly question our love for them. (Yes, we can talk about tough love, but even then, there is a purpose behind it, and that purpose should be expressed, or else it is simply being harsh.)

So this question really is more about where we place ourselves in relation to God, the giver and provider and sustainer of our lives. Do we really know better than God what needs to happen in our lives? Where we there to see His grand design for all things when He created them? No, and that means that, since we cannot have God's view of things, there will be things that happen that make sense to Him that are simply beyond our ability to comprehend and understand. We can look through the Scriptures and see many examples of this. There are times when God allows "bad" things to happen to His people. There are even times when God is the one who designs these "bad" things. Yet, God alone sees the grand picture and the overall design of things. 

So really, this question causes us to ask ourselves, where in my life do I have a difficult time letting God do His thing? Now, right here I think I should say, we may not know the answer to that during our lifetime. God works on a really large scale, so something may happen in our lives that do not have their true impact for a generation or two, or three. God spoke powerfully through Jeremiah, but the likelihood is that Jeremiah did not see the resettlement of the promised land seventy years later. 

Since God works both intimately in our lives and on a grand design that encompasses the whole scope of time and space, it is rare for us to see the full extent of His actions at any given moment. And so, our question for today helps us realize the reality that we are the created and He is the Creator. When things don't make sense to us, it isn't that He can't explain it to us. It's more likely that what He would tell us would go far beyond what we could ever consider. That may not be the most helpful thing to hear in that moment, but it helps us keep the perspective that God knows what He is doing and still cares about us intimately.