Dear Friend,
As you face your trials today, Jesus comes alongside you with weeping and wild hope.
My Gospel reading for this morning portrays Jesus weeping over Jerusalem. Jesus knows that within a generation of his visitation, Roman armies will desolate the city he loves. So he weeps and says, “Would that even today you knew the things that make for peace. But now they are hid from your eyes.” (Luke 19:42)
My reading for Sunday in Job does not deny weeping; it adds a hope beyond what we can ask or even imagine. As Job sits among his ashes and suffers, he also expresses a hope, which at the time, he dismisses as fantasy. Lamenting that God “is not a man as I am” (Job 9:32), Job believes the inequality between himself and God makes reconciliation impossible. He says,
There is no umpire between us,
Who might lay his hand upon us both (Job 9:33)
Continuing in that vein, Job asks the Almighty if He can understand how a human feels:
Do you have eyes of flesh?
Do you see as humans see? (Job 10:4)
According to the Gospel, God became flesh in Jesus Christ so that not only can our Lord see as we see, he also learned from what he suffered. The author of Hebrews writes,
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prays and supplications with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard for his godly reverence. Although he was a Son, he learned obedience from what he suffered, and being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him. (Hebrews 5:7-9)
As one expression of obedience today, you can know that your cries and tears are heard by our God who became flesh. I trust this will give you hope, and I believe such a wild hope has its place among “the things that make for peace.” (Luke 19:42)
Love,
Joel