Pause for Thought: 19 October
God’s Silence
The person of hope is the person who waits, and with a pessimistic waiting, for normally nothing should happen. The only thing we can reckon on is frustration and derision. How could it be otherwise in God’s silence? Job waits, and his friends never tire of proving to him that this is absurd (which it is), that he is wrong (which he is), that God will not come (which is true). They take pains to explain to him why God will not come (Job is guilty), and to make fun of him, since his attitude either is one of a godless rebellion or of an absurd expectation. Still Job waits. Just as Job is the one who attests that a person serves God for nothing, so he is the one in whom the fullness of waiting is actualised. His whole life is filled with waiting. He never lets himself be diverted to the right or to the left by his own attempts to transform the situation. He has penetrated to the bottom of the problem with lucidity. He knows that in the last analysis it is an affair between God and himself, that all the rest, the things that happen, are only the outward aspect of the quarrel with God. He does not work hard and courageously to recover his riches. He does not set out in pursuit of the brigands, or the foreign soldiers, in an attempt to get back his oxen and his camels. He rejects all those human reactions because he knows that the root of the problem is not there. Nothing of serious consequence can be done until satisfaction is had from God. He leaves activity and work to one side, since the one important thing is to wait for God.
From Hope in Time of Abandonment by Jacques Ellul
God’s Silence
The person of hope is the person who waits, and with a pessimistic waiting, for normally nothing should happen. The only thing we can reckon on is frustration and derision. How could it be otherwise in God’s silence? Job waits, and his friends never tire of proving to him that this is absurd (which it is), that he is wrong (which he is), that God will not come (which is true). They take pains to explain to him why God will not come (Job is guilty), and to make fun of him, since his attitude either is one of a godless rebellion or of an absurd expectation. Still Job waits. Just as Job is the one who attests that a person serves God for nothing, so he is the one in whom the fullness of waiting is actualised. His whole life is filled with waiting. He never lets himself be diverted to the right or to the left by his own attempts to transform the situation. He has penetrated to the bottom of the problem with lucidity. He knows that in the last analysis it is an affair between God and himself, that all the rest, the things that happen, are only the outward aspect of the quarrel with God. He does not work hard and courageously to recover his riches. He does not set out in pursuit of the brigands, or the foreign soldiers, in an attempt to get back his oxen and his camels. He rejects all those human reactions because he knows that the root of the problem is not there. Nothing of serious consequence can be done until satisfaction is had from God. He leaves activity and work to one side, since the one important thing is to wait for God.From Hope in Time of Abandonment by Jacques Ellul
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