A God who suffers

WORD 2day: Tuesday, 26th week in Ordinary time

September 27, 2022: Job 3: 1-3, 11-17, 20-23; Luke 9: 51-56

The Word today has a very curious kind of a message to give us! James and John wish to bring fire down from heaven to punish the people who did not accept Christ. Job's friends pressurise Job to curse God and get done with God, for all the suffering that God has caused him unjustly! Jesus rebukes James and John and Job refuses to give into the counsel of his friends. Job is presented as the prefigurement of the suffering servant that Jesus was to be!

It is not just a suffering servant's figure that we see here manifested in Jesus, but the image of a compassionate God who suffers on our behalf. It is not true that it has happened just once in history... it had always happened, and it keeps happening that the Lord feels so much when we are adamant, arrogant and whimsical: a compassionate God who is so madly in love with us!

It is 'Christ'ian maturity and 'Christ'ian mindset, to endure our suffering not blaming God or complaining to God, but seeking to find God during those moments of suffering. When we sincerely seek God, we will find God so close to us that we would understand that even God suffers along with us! "When you search for me you will find me; if you seek me with all your heart I will let you find me, says the Lord" (Jer 29:13). 

Our God is not a God who makes us suffer, but a God who suffers, when we suffer! It takes courage and faith to grow out of the infantile thinking that God is there to set right everything that goes wrong in our life, and to come to the understanding that God is there with us through the thick and thin, when we choose God with the freedom we are gifted with, and when we reject God in abuse of the same freedom! All the time, the Lord is there. Especially in our moments of struggle, let us remember the Lord is with us, the Lord suffers with us.