“Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.” (Job 38:4)
Business blogger Anton Roundy asks his readers to consider miscalculations. If you’re going somewhere and you’re off course by just one degree, after one foot, you’ll miss your target by 0.2 inches. No big deal, right?
- After 100 yards, you’ll be off by 5.2 feet. Not huge, but noticeable.
- After a mile, you’ll be off by 92.2 feet. One degree is starting to make a difference.
- After traveling from San Francisco to L.A., you’ll be off by 6 miles.
- If you were trying to get from San Francisco to Washington, D.C., you’d end up on the other side of Baltimore, 42.6 miles away.
- Traveling around the globe from Washington, DC, you’d miss by 435 miles and end up in Boston.
- In a rocket going to the moon, you’d be 4,169 miles off (nearly twice the diameter of the moon).
- Going to the sun, you’d miss by over 1.6 million miles (nearly twice the diameter of the sun).
- Traveling to the nearest star, you’d be off course by over 441 billion miles (120 times the distance from the earth to Pluto, or 4,745 times the distance from Earth to the sun). read blog here
Having the right information is important for making correct calculations. Job discovered this.
Job was living through “hell on earth” – he lost his family, his possessions, and his health. David, in Psalm 40, described being in a “miry pit.” Well, that’s exactly where Job was, too.
And it was here, in this dark place – this pit – that Job and his friends began to reach conclusions about how God runs the universe and the “unfairness” of it all. But Job’s calculations were off. Job judged God’s governance based on Job’s circumstances…and Job’s limited knowledge. But he miscalculated. Job missed God’s character by 441 billion miles!
The book ends with God expanding Job’s horizons. Here’s Job’s response: “…Surely I spoke about things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know…I had heard rumors about You, but now my eyes have seen You.” (Job 42:3, 5, HCSB).
If you’re in a “pit” in life, that’s a bad place to do theology. If you’re ignorant of God’s character, that’s a bad place from which to “judge” his governance of the universe. If you don’t know him, but base your information off of rumors about him…well, you are going to wind up way off course. The place to get the answers you need – like Job – is face-to-face with God.
Join us Sunday as we study this fascinating passage in our sermon series “Questions God Asks.”
See you Sunday
