Trust in Adversity

 Job 6-7                 Psalm 56             John 18

 Continuing my journey through Job, believed to be the oldest book in the Bible, I read chapters 6 and 7, Job’s first response to the challenge of his friends about faith. How often do our greatest challenges to our faith come from those closest to us? Job begins but recognizing the heaviness of his grief and the feeling overwhelmed by it at times. He also see that even in his pain it is an opportunity to examine his faith in God and challenge others to look at it has he does.

 I flipped to Psalm 56 and found it was a look at the conflict David had to endure for those that challenged his faith when things didn’t go the way they thought it should. David too struggled with the suffering of being deceptively described but keeping his faith that God saw his heart and would judge him on that inner-being.

 In John 18 Jesus is with his disciples in the Garden across the Kidron Valley from Jerusalem and Judas leads the guard there to arrest him. If you look carefully when he identifies himself as the one they are looking for they shrink back from him. When they start to arrest Jesus Peter wants to fight, draws his sword and attacks, inflicting damage. Jesus stops him and reminds him that this is part of God’s plan and he shouldn’t interfere with it.

 Next we find Jesus in the middle of both the Jewish and Roman power centers and Peter and John on the fringe of the crowd. It is as the first of the process of deception that will lead to Jesus death begins that we find Peter afraid and denying he knows Jesus, just as he was told he would.

 The conflict continues in the interactions between the power of the Jewish leaders and the Roman government. It is the beginning of a clear conflict between two centers of power that are looking for ways to threaten one another and Jesus is in the middle of this conflict. Here Jesus starts to show that he can face the dangers without fear because the Kingdom is not one they understand, of this world, but one of the power of God and the Spirit.

 As they both attempt to find ways to put the responsibility on the other they become complicit in the death of Jesus. We should note that all are doing what they believe is best while serving God and maintaining their power.

 The conflict for most of us throughout today’s readings is the challenge to our faith by the conflict it often does and should bring to our lives we would rather avoid. However, our call is to put our trust in God to know the best outcome for the world even when we cannot see the part our lives play in it. Right now.