“The Alternative View”

This will be on the back page of the bulletin at Fishkill UMC for this coming Sunday (October 07, 2018, 20th Sunday after Pentecost, Year B)

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My interest in the Book of Job has ranged over the years from antipathy to curiosity to a desire to understand.  And I think that is one of the reasons that it is incorporated in the Old Testament canon; there is a need to understand who God is and our relationship with Him.

In the opening chapters of Job, as his fortune and life disappear, all of Job’s friends, and even his wife, tell him that he had to have done something to displease God.  For that is the traditional view of life – you do good things and you are rewarded; you do bad things and you are punished – there is no alternative.

Job suggests that there is an alternative and, in the coming chapters, will seek an audience with God to understand what that alternative is.

The writer of Hebrews and Mark point out that traditional view has been changed with the presence of Jesus.  It is a view that we have been presented with this past week and which is going to challenge us in the coming days.

The question that we must ask ourselves is very simple.  Will we stay with the traditional view, knowing that it does not lead us to Christ?  Or shall we endeavor to open our minds, our hearts, and our souls to Christ and see the alternative view that is offered?

~~Tony Mitchell