Job 18:20-21 They of the west are appalled at their fate,
and horror seizes those of the east.
Surely such are the dwellings of the ungodly,
such is the place of those who do not know God.
Someone asked me once to summarize the Bible in one sentence. Here's what I came up with: "Spoiler alert: God wins." God wins over brokenness and pain. God wins over evil and destruction. In the end, what the Jesus story means - what the central feature of the Jesus story (the story we remember each Holy Week and Easter) means is that God wins over death. God wins. God wins. The quote above is from the book of Job. This gets complicated for a short little devotional message like this, but here goes: bad things happened to Job and he asked why. The above is a quote from his friend Bildad. Bildad basically said that bad things happened to Job - bad things happen to bad people as punishment from God. Therefore Job must have been bad.
What we don't get when we pull a little snippet out of context like this is that a few chapters later God shows up... in person. God shows up and tells Bildad (and two others friends who had equally stupid answers) that they are wrong. They are wrong and the best thing they can do is shut up and sit in silence. Because God wins. And God doesn't win by destroying our lives. It defeats the purpose of God winning. Because what God wins is life for God's beloved children: Job and you and I.
In Christ,
Pastor Seth
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