Disrupted Scripts
We live in stories. We live by scripts. We fill in the blanks, expecting the expected. I wake up, and I have my routine and follow that script. We have scripts that we use to frame the larger issues of our lives--birth, school, graduation, potential marriage and family, and death.
I was reading this morning an article on the book of Job as an ancient wisdom script. In other words, there is a set pattern of wisdom literature in the ancient world--highlighting the importance of wisdom, and then a king or a wealthy or recognized person (Job), and then usually false or competing wisemen (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar), a dilemma (Job's suffering, his complaints with God, and his friends attempts to resolve it), and then the resolution of the dilemma by wisdom. The same script can be seen in Joseph's interpretation of Pharoah's dreams, in Daniel, perhaps the beginning of Esther, other ancient scripts, and the author argued in Job as well.
Anyway, the audience would have been familiar with this script and be reading along... like we do, they would expect certain things, and thus Elihu's speech would probably have been expected to bring the resolution... but surprisingly enough, it doesn't. The audience is left in disruption, disturbed, their world turned upside down, the expected doesn't happen, things are left ajar and unexplained...
And
then
comes the really unexpected, a theophany, which completely disrupts their known script. God intervenes....
I was reading this morning an article on the book of Job as an ancient wisdom script. In other words, there is a set pattern of wisdom literature in the ancient world--highlighting the importance of wisdom, and then a king or a wealthy or recognized person (Job), and then usually false or competing wisemen (Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar), a dilemma (Job's suffering, his complaints with God, and his friends attempts to resolve it), and then the resolution of the dilemma by wisdom. The same script can be seen in Joseph's interpretation of Pharoah's dreams, in Daniel, perhaps the beginning of Esther, other ancient scripts, and the author argued in Job as well.
Anyway, the audience would have been familiar with this script and be reading along... like we do, they would expect certain things, and thus Elihu's speech would probably have been expected to bring the resolution... but surprisingly enough, it doesn't. The audience is left in disruption, disturbed, their world turned upside down, the expected doesn't happen, things are left ajar and unexplained...
And
then
comes the really unexpected, a theophany, which completely disrupts their known script. God intervenes....
Many of our lives, too, have been disrupted. Hanging in an unexpected broken script, without closure. We wait. Uncertain.
Yet, Christ is the author of our faith (Heb. 12:1-3). The Father wrote the script, the Word entered the script, and the Spirit illuminates it and still is active within it.
And
God intervenes.
In our story.
For our good.
We expect the unexpected--in Christ alone, we expect grace.
Amazing--EXPECT grace. Expect the undeserved. Expect salvation.
Becuase he has done it. He has promised. He took what he did not deserve, so we could have and expect what we do not deserve.
Amazing grace.
And for this unexpected disruption in our stories, we know the ending.
Look beyond the disruption, to the Author, the promised end.
Yet, Christ is the author of our faith (Heb. 12:1-3). The Father wrote the script, the Word entered the script, and the Spirit illuminates it and still is active within it.
And
God intervenes.
In our story.
For our good.
We expect the unexpected--in Christ alone, we expect grace.
Amazing--EXPECT grace. Expect the undeserved. Expect salvation.
Becuase he has done it. He has promised. He took what he did not deserve, so we could have and expect what we do not deserve.
Amazing grace.
And for this unexpected disruption in our stories, we know the ending.
Look beyond the disruption, to the Author, the promised end.
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