bookshelf

Found a new feature to put on the blog, a book shelf that looks like a book shelf! What fun.

One of the things I liked best about the MySpace blog was putting up whatever I was listening to or reading at the moment. Now I can share my reading list in a cool way, rather than just a list. Will have to figure out how to take the list off later. Have promised a friend a listing of books, as she's working with the poor and is facing all kinds of questions about povery in America, as well as how easy it is for us in the middle class to feel guilty for a moment and then just go on as usual. Good questions, good struggles. Very much in the tradition of the prophets, I'd say.

I've been reading through Job again recently. It was the first book of the Bible I read through from start to finish when I was nineteen. There's been a lot of life between nineteen and forty-ish. Job reads very differently now. I understand the agony, the bitterness, and the empty words of his friends in a much deeper way now. Having lived through my own agonies and bitterness, I hear Job's distress much clearer. God's answer though, still seems a bit short. Placing Job in the context of the cyclone in Myanmar, Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and the recent earthquake in China - so many people whose lives are devastated. One brief moment of terror and their lives will never be the same.

I understand that to a degree. Terror, agony, and your life will never be the same. I've lived through hurricanes and tornados but not earthquakes. My home has never been completely destroyed. I understand the loss of loved ones though, and the fear of wondering where to go next, where to put down roots, how will you put down roots again?

God's brief answer to Job and then the restoration of all his family and possessions, doubled over again, that just doesn't seem fair. The families of southern Louisiana and southeast Texas are still struggling to put their lives back together in a minimal way. The families of China who lost their only child will never have their beloved child back. The people in Myanmar are desperate for clean water and a simple meal, never mind a home. How can we say that God will restore?

It's frustrating. And yet, I can't give up hope. I cannot abandon hope in a loving God who will not let us go. It doesn't seem as though life as we know it will ever look like the Job story, but that doesn't mean we have to abandon faith.

I am reminded of a story James told me about the dung beetle he watched while out on patrol one day. Over and over this beetle would push a roll of dung and dirt up a small hill, only to have the roll fall down the hill. The beetle would climb back down and start over again, pushing up the hill.

It seemed an exercise in futility to the outsider. Why bother? But the rolling actually IS part of the dung beetle's existence. Struggling to roll that ball makes a place to store food, and for the females, it can form a place to lay eggs. There is a purpose to the struggle after all.

In our struggles, in our wanderings, in our seeming futility we can find hope and purpose. That's why I refuse to give up on God. The hope and purpose will come clear, in time.