I heard a story about twin girls, toddlers, blind since birth. As toddlers do, they liked to test their limits. One day as they were headed toward trouble, their mother told them to stop. They did for a moment, and then, very quietly, tiptoed on toward the forbidden activity. They could not understand how their mother knew what they were up to, perceiving their mother to be like them. If they made no noise, she wouldn’t know what they were up to. They could not see what they could not see.
In the depths of suffering, Job could not understand God. He cannot see what he cannot see. And even though he does not waver in his belief in God, he begins to question God. Job, while blameless and upright, is also human, and it is the most human thing in the world to ask “why” when things go horribly wrong. Why does God let us suffer? How can a loving God permit calamity? If a hurricane destroys a community or a plane crashes or someone sets off a bomb or shoots innocent people, is that a divine punishment? We, like Job, have those questions, and sometimes we too want to call God to account.
But when Job finally gets to confront God, his questions fall away, and his attitude changes. Once, he carefully tiptoed around God, following the rules, as though he could control God’s action by spiritual correctness. Surviving the whirlwind, his eyes are opened, and he is transformed. He acknowledges God’s sovereignty and sees what he could not see before: The life of faith is not about blind obedience. Job begins to grasp the greatness of God, the Creator who yet engages with the created. He realizes it is one thing to hear about God and quite a different thing to experience God, to see God.