When Life Doesn’t Make Sense
Where do you turn when life doesn’t make sense?
When you get a major health diagnosis. When your parents die. When you lose your job. When your child goes wayward. When talk of nuclear war breaks out. When the stock market tanks. When your marriage ends. When your body is failing…
Job of the Bible was someone who was intimately acquainted with a life that didn’t make sense. He went from being a wealthy, godly family man to losing everything. He lost his wealth, his kids, and had painful sores all over his body. All this time, he didn’t realize that God had allowed Satan to bring about all these catastrophes.
His friends provided no real comfort, so he ultimately began to question the God of the universe—whom, he acknowledged, both gives and takes away (Job 1:21). And God did, indeed, respond—showing His immensity and Job’s smallness in Job 38-42. God asks: “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me if you understand. Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know. Who stretched a measuring line across it? On what were its footings set, or who laid its cornerstone?” (Job 38:4-6). Have you comprehended the vast expenses of the earth? Tell me if you know all this (Job 38:18).
Consider our incredible planet. It is about 8,000 miles in diameter. The surface of the Earth is 197 million square miles. The volume of the Earth is 260 cubic miles. The weight of the Earth is 260 billion cubic miles, and this beautiful, heavy planet simply hangs in the air? It’s as if God is asking Job (and us): “Did you know that the earth orbits the sun at 67,000 miles per hour? Did you know that there are 1 billion microbes in a teaspoon of soil? Did you know that there are an estimated 10 nonillion individual viruses (that’s 31 O’s!) on planet earth? God knows it all and fashioned it perfectly into being.
God shows Job his power over the seas (38:8-11). “Who shuts up the seas behind doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said ‘this far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt.”
It’s as if God was asking Job: “Did you know, Job, that the deepest part of the ocean that has been discovered so far is 7 miles deep? Did you know that the ocean contains 352 quintillion gallons of water and 139 million square miles? Did you know that at the deepest part of the ocean, the pressure is more than 16,000 pounds per square inch?”
And while you’re at it, Job: Have you ever given orders to the morning, or shown the dawn its place, that it might take the earth by the edges and shake the wicked out of it? (38:12-13). Have the gates of death been shown to you? Have you seen the gates of the deepest darkness? (38:17).
God shows his power over the weather and the stars: Can you bind the chains of the Pleiades? Can you loosen Orion’s belt? Can you bring forth the constellations in their seasons or lead out the bear with its cubs? Do you know the laws of the heavens? Can you set up God’s dominion over the earth? (38:31-33).
Our nearest star is 25 trillion miles away and would take the space probe Voyager 73,000 years to reach it. In our observable universe (the part we can detect), there are 200 trillion billion stars, and God knows each one by name! (Psalm 147:4)
As God continues in His response, He eventually tells Job, and I believe us, in Job 40:14, that if you can do all that God can do, then your own right hand can save you.
And that’s just the point. Our problem is that our “right hand” (or our left for that matter!) cannot save us.
We are ultimately powerless in this world. We don’t understand everything. We can’t understand everything. We are desperately in need of something, Someone, outside of ourselves—Jesus Christ.
For while we were powerless and enemies of God, unable to be right before Him, Christ lived in the midst of our brokenness. He experienced the unfathomable—that all who would come to faith in Him could be right before God. Jesus was and is the wisdom and power of God. It’s only when we understand our need, and God’s answer—His provision, that it leads us to fall on our knees in desperation for Him.
This is Job’s ultimate response before God in 40:3-5: Then Job answered the Lord: I am unworthy—how can I reply to you? I put my hand over my mouth. I spoke once, but I have no answer—twice, but I will say no more.
God doesn’t want to minimize our pain and what we’re going through. He wants to get down beside us and walk with us through it. He wants to show us His bigness—that whatever circumstances we face, He is greater still! We don’t have to hold it all and understand it all—because He already does!
Perhaps A. W. Tozer said it best: “With the goodness of God to desire our highest welfare, the wisdom of God to plan it and the power of God to achieve it, what do we lack?” The answer…nothing!
