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Starting April 22nd, each Wednesday evening for four weeks @ 6pm–7pm EST, Pastor Jim Wood and I will co-lead our next \”Life Class\” at the First Presbyterian Church of Norfolk at 820 Colonial Avenue; Norfolk, VA, where I serve as theologian in Residence. The theme this time around will be \”Great God; Great Pain: How Do I Reconcile My Faith with My Pain?\” We will look at the Book of Job.
We are very excited about this discussion. It will be a tough one. Most of the time people refer to pain, we are talking about physical pain. So many people are experiencing pain these days — whether emotional, psychological or physical.
Nothing must have been more painful than the lived reality expressed in Job. We must engage the story, imagining what any human being must feel when things seem to be going oh so well; then, suddenly what was going to well goes so wrong! Have you ever been there?
In this story, Job was not one of these persons who had material wealth but no spiritual life or relationship with the Lord. The first chapter of Job describes Job as a \”man who was blameless and upright, how who feared God and turned away from evil\” (Job 1:1).
Already, this story is complicated! If everything was going so well and if Job was such a good and holy guy, why would things go so wrong for him? What might he have been thinking when the news came back to him that everyday he was losing something, including his children, his wife, his friends and even his own health?
We will explore this more at Life Class!
