Daily Lesson for January 9, 2020

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Job chapter 21 verses 5 through 9:

Look at me, and be appalled,
    and lay your hand upon your mouth.
6
When I think of it I am dismayed,
    and shuddering seizes my flesh.
7
Why do the wicked live on,
    reach old age, and grow mighty in power?
8
Their children are established in their presence,
    and their offspring before their eyes.
9
Their houses are safe from fear,
    and no rod of God is upon them.

Job’s complaint is bitter; it is angry. But Job’s rawness, if we allow it to have its word, has something to say about society and its injustice.

It is those who suffer from the daily hardships of the order of our world who can see its inequities. They know first hand how we treat the poor and powerless compared with the rich and powerful. They call suspicion upon the given narrative that things are as they are simply because it is what people deserve. That is a narrative of the powerful and the privileged. Job gives us another narrative, bitter as it is.

Job is hard to listen to. His pain is deep. His anger is raw. But we must listen to his lament. We must look with his eyes. They tell us something if we dare to look through them. Job was rich, and prospering, and everyone respected him. He was a man of privilege. Now he is poor, and cursed, and contemptible to all. Now he is a waste, and a drag, and a burden to society. But Job is the same man.

To allow Job to have his say is to let him speak to us in our own privilege. It is to allow him to say things about how we treat others and how our government treats them also. The poor, the aged, the cursed of society — these are the Jobs. And, they could well have been us.

Maybe even still could be . . .