How do we expect God to show up in our lives? To respond to our suffering? Do we seek comfort, or encouragement? To reveal to us the lesson He wants us to learn?

Job, after losing everything, and dealing with three not quite sympathetic friends, wanted Justice. He wanted God to show up, hear Job’s case, and acknowledge the injustice of his suffering.

God did show up, but not the way Job hoped. God showed up to confront, in a raging whirlwind.

God relentlessly questions Job. Who was Job to question God’s justice? Was Job a witness to all of God’s acts? Did he know what God knows? See what God sees?

When the questioning from God stops, Job declares, “I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you; therefore I despise myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (Job 42: 5-6).

In Christ, God shows up in human flesh. He shows up to suffer, to be mocked, betrayed, humiliated, and tortured. To die an unjust death on a Roman cross. He shows us the true wisdom and justice of God by taking our sin upon Himself.

Sometimes God may seem to answer our suffering or cries of injustice with more suffering. We may, like Job, think God is being unjust to us, that none of His children should face such things. Yet God shows up in Jesus and answers our cries of injustice and cruelty by Himself suffering injustice and cruelty on our behalf.

Like Job, what can we do, but pour contempt on all our pride. To despise ourselves and repent of what is unworthy of our suffering Savior and God?