God's Answer to Suffering: The Ostrich and the Horse
Job built a waiting room inside himself, refusing to move forward until God explained the suffering. God answered not with reasons, but with a foolish bird and a war horse—creatures that run toward the very things we dread, and call it joy.
The Waiting Room We Build Ourselves
There is a room we build inside ourselves when life stops making sense. Not a hospital waiting room, not a lawyer's office, but a room of our own construction, where we sit with a stack of unanswered questions and decide we will not move forward until God gives us a reason. We rehearse the arguments. We keep the door to faith cracked open, just enough, waiting for the explanation that will finally make everything click into place. We tell ourselves that if we could just understand why, we could survive it.
Job sat in that room. He built his case carefully, argued his innocence, demanded an audience, and asked, with full moral seriousness, for God to account for the suffering that had stripped his life bare. And God answered. Not with a verdict. With a whirlwind, and a strange question: have you looked at the ostrich lately?
Take a moment to read Job 39:13-25. Read it on Bible Gateway if you'd like.