Daily Lesson for August 26, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Job chapter 9 verses 1 through 3 and 15:

Then Job answered and said:

2 “Truly I know that it is so:

But how can a man be in the right before God?

3 If one wished to contend with him,

one could not answer him once in a thousand times.

15 Though I am in the right, I cannot answer him;

I must appeal for mercy to my accuser.

There is a legal term called "nolo contendre", which is Latin for "I do not wish to contend".  In jurisprudence it is sometimes referred to as a plea of no contest. 

Though Job's suffering is terrible and the shame of it all even worse, he nevertheless wishes not to contend with God. Job knows it would simply be no contest. Though what has befallen him he sees as unfair, Job recognizes that fairness is a relative term. For who really wants fairness when it comes to God? In the end, it is better to plea for mercy.

So let me take this out of the book of Job and set it in real life. Yesterday I had lunch with a dear friend whose life was dramatically changed by a accident many years ago. We meet regularly to break bread and talk. What happened to my friend was tragic and life altering. It was also incredibly unfair. Yet yesterday, as we set down together I realized that though my friend was tired and carrying a heavy burden, he was not bitter. He is past the point of thinking God or life owed him something different or something more -- that was a part of the journey of grief but is now unhelpful and even counterproductive. Now, he sees it as a grace to have what he does and he treasures it greatly. In fact, I know of nobody else who treasures the simple things of life more than my friend.

To contend with God is not a sin. It is a part of the journey. But the wisdom which comes from suffering reveals the extraordinary value of small graces like breaking bread with a friend or getting an unsolicited "I love you," from a child. Who has earned such a thing?  And who could weigh its value -- this grace of unfair gifts?

There is a poem by Raymond Carver I sometimes recite at funerals when someone who has suffered inordinately passes. It is called "Late Fragment", and it speaks to me of the hidden fragment of grace and love and mercy even amidst the visible fracture of a broken body or a broken life:

And did you get what

you wanted from this life, even so?

I did.

And what did you want?

To call myself beloved, to feel myself

beloved on the earth.

Who can contend with God?  He who has given us so much even in so small and suffering of ways.