About Us

Letter from the Vicar

Dear friends,

 Being Angry with God.

The news is bringing us so many stories of human suffering. Night after night we see pictures of people starving, of the destruction of homes, schools and hospitals and people recounting their stories of trauma and despair. The recent mud slides in Pakistan and wildfires elsewhere remind us of how life can be turned upside down in a few hours. Why does God allow such suffering to happen? Why do bad things happen to good people? Throughout history people have asked the same questions but there are no easy answers. The Bible devotes an entire book to dealing with the problem, the book concerns a man named Job.

Job was ‘the greatest man among all the people of the East’. He was blameless and upright, he feared God and shunned evil. Life was going well for Job. He had a family of 7 sons and 3 daughters. He was wealthy and widely respected. Then a series of catastrophes changed his life. All his oxen, donkeys and camels were stolen, his servants were killed and his sheep were destroyed by lightning. As if that wasn’t enough, a wind then swept in from the desert which destroyed his eldest son’s house and killed all Job’s children. We might react rather differently to Job. He simply fell to the ground and blessed God saying: “the Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.” However, Job’s troubles continued, his health worsened and he was afflicted by very painful sores. When Job’s three friends came to comfort him, they wept as they saw him brought so low and sitting on a heap of ashes outside the city. For a week they sat with him and mourned with him before offering well-meant but unhelpful advice. The friends insisted that he must have committed some terrible sin or that he had not prayed hard enough, either way Job’s comforters told him that he must have brought his misfortunes upon himself.

In the first chapter of the book, we are told about the hand of the Satan in what was going on, but Job and his friends were unaware of this. Job repeatedly asked God the question ‘why me?’ but he was never given an answer. Job became aggrieved, he charged God with being angry, unforgiving and destructive and we see Job swinging between times of confidence and despair. Job longed for a sense of God’s presence and for a chance to plead his case but God remained silent. Job then turned from his personal sufferings to question God’s role in the wider world and the exploitation of needy and helpless people.

Despite his struggles Job remained close to God. His spiritual journey led him towards accepting the limited nature of our human knowledge and understanding compared to the infinite wisdom of God. Job came to accept that he just had to let go and allow God to be God and he came to see that what mattered was not the things that were going wrong in his life and in the world, what mattered was his relationship with God.

The Bible tells us that God “heals the broken-hearted and binds up their wounds.” (Ps147 v3) And as St Paul wrote in his letter to the Romans, nothing can ever separate us from God’s love. Suffering often tests our faith but it also enables us to help others who are going through similar situations. As Job said: “God knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold.” 

Rev’d Brenda