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Morning Meditation
September 8, 2026
(The reading appointed for today is admittedly quite long. But its length is essential to its message. It’s best read with patience… and, hopefully, no small degree of empathy.)
Job 29:1-20
And Job again took up his discourse, and said:
“Oh, that I were as in the months of old,
as in the days when God watched over me;
when his lamp shone upon my head,
and by his light I walked through darkness;
as I was in my autumn days,
when the friendship of God was upon my tent;
when the Almighty was yet with me,
when my children were about me;
when my steps were washed with milk,
and the rock poured out for me streams of oil!
When I went out to the gate of the city,
when I prepared my seat in the square,
the young men saw me and withdrew,
and the aged rose and stood;
the princes refrained from talking,
and laid their hand on their mouth;
the voice of the nobles was hushed,
and their tongue cleaved to the roof of their mouth.
When the ear heard, it called me blessed,
and when the eye saw, it approved;
because I delivered the poor who cried,
and the fatherless who had none to help him.
The blessing of him who was about to perish came upon me,
and I caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy.
I put on righteousness, and it clothed me;
my justice was like a robe and a turban.
I was eyes to the blind,
and feet to the lame.
I was a father to the poor,
and I searched out the cause of him whom I did not know.
I broke the fangs of the unrighteous,
and made him drop his prey from his teeth.
Then I thought, ‘I shall die in my nest,
and I shall multiply my days as the sand,
my roots spread out to the waters,
with the dew all night on my branches,
my glory fresh with me,
and my bow ever new in my hand.’
Meditation by Peter Vanderveen
In 1988, when Stephen Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time became a runaway bestseller, one of its initial reviewers was a trained physicist for whom all of the ideas that Hawking presented were familiar. And he had read the book several times. Yet he still found many of the passages impossible to understand. He wondered, then, what it was that caused so many people – millions who had no training in physics – to buy the book; for he was convinced that few could make much headway in it at all.
His answer was telling. He suggested that people were purchasing the book not in order to read it but simply to display it on their coffee tables. “Like the Bible,” he said, “it’s a book better left untouched. Learning what it actually says is too difficult. But leaving it out for others to see grants a certain desirable status.”
Most people probably know the basic premise of the book of Job. He was in every respect a good person; some might say he was excellent. He was also innocent of any great offense. And yet, suddenly, all that he had built up for himself, by every measure, came tumbling down. The entirety of his life became unrelinquished torment. It was wholly undeserved, and he railed against God because there was no way that anyone, God included, could justify his suffering.
And this is where we generally leave the story, framed only in abstract terms that might be of interest but do not bite. Faith seems often to be best served up from this kind of distance: Jesus saves, God loves everyone, God never tests us with more than we can handle, etc. Religious platitudes abound. For they free us from an amazing amount of arduous soul-searching.
But Job would have none of this. And what he said, how he described his travails, was meant to force us out of a certain amount of deadening complacency. Job insisted that he be seen for who he was and what actually befell him, in his time, within his community, to his reputation and standing, and to his self, both his body and his soul. Look at what was lost! Read Job’s recounting. You might want to think, then, that Job is a book “better left untouched. Learning what it actually says is too difficult.”
However, God can have presence to us, truly, only when we struggle against what we have great trouble understanding, especially when we leave platitudes behind in order to come to terms with the fragility and contingency that often actually plague us. This is, after all, the testimony of the Gospels, from God’s incarnation through Jesus’ crucifixion. God’s promise isn’t abstract. It touches every point where we may feel abandoned. The beauty of the church is coming to see this in distinction.
Prayer
Father in Heaven! Hold not our sins up against us
But hold us up against our sins
So that the thought of Thee
When it wakens in our soul
Should not remind us of what we have committed
But of what Thou didst forgive
Not of how we went astray
But of how Thou didst save us.
Kierkegaard
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