Old timers might remember a well-known poem by Max Ehrmann called “Desiderata” that was set to music in the early 70s. “You are a child of the universe,” the poem says, “No doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.” That is similar to the message that God delivers to Job at the end of the Biblical book with his name. God basically tells Job (a little snarkily) that if you just look around you’ll see I’m pretty smart and I know what I’d doing. “Have you ever in your lifetime commanded the morning and shown the dawn its place?” Even for believers, however, this response is just a little unsatisfying. While it might be consoling to know that the big picture is taken care of and that in the end things will turn out okay, how does that help me in my particular problem or difficulty? Glory be to God that the divine plan includes Jesus and him crucified. We find that God does not just deal in wholesale but also in retail, in the particular fate of this incarnate person we find that God’s plan includes a human story that transforms death into life.
