“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding.”  (Job 38:4 ESV)

Many of us often wonder why God allows some much suffering and pain in the world, in our lives. Throughout the book of Job, Job and his friends struggled unsuccessfully to come to terms with that problem. Why did God allow such suffering to afflict Job? His friends felt sure he had committed som grievous sin for, in their world view, suffering is always God’s punishment. And Job accused God of being unfair because he has committed so such sin.

When the Lord spoke at last, He asked Job a question that revealed that neither Job nor his friends were in any position to offer an opinion or assessment on how the Lord should manage and run the universe He has created. They cannot because they could not see things from the Lord’s perspective and had no access to or knowledge of all the Lord knows, no clue has to how He runs things or why. The Lord proceeded to demonstrate how small human knowledge is, so that humans have no justification for calling Him unjust or unfair. His series of graphic yet unanswerable questions ought to make each one of us keep our mouths quiet and never again boast of our “wisdom”.

We stand helpless before the aspects of creation that the Lord speaks of. Scientist try to explain such wonders with sagacious theories which are highly speculative because leave God out of the picture. And despite all our scientific and technological advancements, natural disasters seem to occur with random unpredictability, without reason or logic; but the Lord controls all of them, sets their limits and uses them for His own purposes. We humans label God’s power as “mother nature” and spend a lot of time and energy trying to prevent the damage that results from floods, earthquakes, severe storms and climate change. Yet the best science and government can do is make predictions, attempt to minimize risk, and repair the resulting damage. Therefore, the best thing we human beings can really do is to place himself in the hands of the Lord, trust Him and ask for faith, mercy, forgiveness, wisdom and the strength to endure. He will not fail to carry us through the hard times.