Job is hotting up

I've just hit Job 38 and it's a corker. God is ripping into the assumptions of Job (and, I think the others who spoke before him). People are put in their place rather grandly, when it's done by God. This is one of my favourite lines:Who can tip over the water jars of the heavens ³⁸ when the dust becomes hard and the clods of earth stick together?

Who indeed. This is what my students would call a smack down. But in seriousness, it was rather lovely to hear directly from God-- not Jesus (not that there's anything wrong with hearing from Jesus) -- but actually, God. Somehow the fact that God answers Job has escaped me in my previous sermons/readings of the passage. Actually, I don't know what I've read of Job or how I know about it. I'm pretty sure that I have read at least some of it before. But it's all blurred in my mind. That's part of the reason why this project is so exciting. I'll know it's all first hand. I mean, I know it's enormously translated in a multitude of ways, and all that. And in fact, probably I'll still forget where I get various bits of knowledge from. But it's got to be a better foundation, anyway, than the hodge-podge of reading I've done in the past. Anyway, hearing from God seemed like rather the rare treat, especially given they can't have actually been expecting this. In fact, I wonder how it came about, since this isn't a play and it presumably wasn't in written form that God spoke.

Other things I like from this passage: God commenting on the careless but joyful ostrich, who is a bit of a rubbish mother, but boy, can she fly. And God explains this by saying that the bird doesn't have wisdom. And it doesn't always look like wisdom, to be so sensitively attuned to the needs and fates of our loved ones. But God says it is. On the other hand, look at that bird fly. I like that.

Acts: well, I love Lydia. What feminist christian doesn't love Lydia. She does her thing, and it's not an issue of her gender, it's just part of the miraculous and wonderful events of Acts. So yay for that. In other news, Paul's decision to command the spirit to leave the woman following him seems heartless given that he just did it when he got annoyed enough. But I guess we don't have the whole picture. Perhaps there was an element of choice in the fact that this woman was inhabited by a spirit. Which would mean that Paul's decision to focus on spreading the gospel to those who wanted to hear would be fair enough, I suppose. Times like that I wish I had a lot more information about the context. A good sermon, I suppose, could clear that one up. Or-- better, because more instantly accessible and personalised-- an askJeeves for Christianity. In lieu, I plod along.