9He is the Maker of the Bear and Orion, the Pleiades and the constellations of the south.
Sometimes we get the scale of something wrong. We think it is a big thing, when it is small, or we make something small that is really big. We can do that with our children almost daily. The things they view as important, we brush off. We say, “Not now,” when ‘now’ is all we have. And then we blow up over a broken pencil point and send them to their rooms. Our sense of ‘important’ is often wrong. Job is answering his friend Bildad who has acted as judge, saying that the catastrophe that has overtaken Job’s life is God’s hand of judgment. Bildad’s timeframe is too small. Job points this out by looking at creation and its size. Job places himself in creation and says that he is insignificant. His voice is so small that he wonders if he would be heard. Sounds like someone in grief, doesn’t it, wondering if God hears, if God is even there. Grief speaks words that express an inner emptiness and longing that get expressed at few other times in life. Job feels insignificant. He feels empty, having lost his children. I would feel empty as well. Job doesn’t need a correcting of his theology. He is expressing a feeling, not making a theological thesis. His statements are true. God did make the constellations and He could crush us with a storm. He has that power. So when we find ourselves with someone in grief, don’t try to correct their theology. Just be with them in their pain, loneliness, emptiness, and despair. Don’t pull them out because you are uncomfortable, join in with them because they are uncomfortable being alone in their grief.
The Arnold Journey 