Prayer for the Grace of Faith Which Surpasses All Understanding

(Job 38:4-5)

“Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!”

(Psalm 102: 25-28)

“Long ago you laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands. They will perish, but you will endure; they will all wear out like a garment. You change them like clothing, and they pass away; but you are the same and your years have no end. The children of your servants shall live secure; their offspring shall be established in your presence.”


“If I am capable of grasping God objectively, I do not believe, but precisely because I cannot do this I must believe. If I wish to preserve myself in faith I must constantly be intent upon holding fast the objective uncertainty, so as to remain out upon the deep, over seventy fathoms of water still preserving my faith.” Søren Kierkegaard, Concluding Unscientific Postscript to Philosophical Fragments.


Let us bring our hearts in prayer this week.  Let us bring with them our knotting stomachs, our sweating brows, our trembling hands. Let us bring the longings, and the questionings, and the secret uncertainties that lie buried so very deep within. Let us pray to finally give them rest before the vastness of the horizon and the magnitude of the stars. Let us pray them gentle surrender to the mysterious and unfathomable depths of the seas and the eternity of incalculable mountain heights. Let us pray for the grace of faith which surpasses all our understandings. Amen.

Job and the "God beyond God"

This week I begin leading our three weeks of study of the book of Job:

“The Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on earth, a blameless and upright man who fears god and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.’” (Job 2:3)

Psalm 13:1-2

How long, O Lord? Will you forget me for ever?

How long will you hide your face from me?

2 How long must I bear pain in my soul,

and have sorrow in my heart all day long?

How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?

“God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world. ~C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain~

Let us bring our forgotten hearts this week. Bring our abandoned souls. Bring them in study and in prayer. Bring them by the slim-thread by which we are, somehow, barely able to continue to endure. As sorrow overflows and enemies over run, bring our hearts and souls. Hold nothing back from the God whose very essence is to seek the depth of us which lies beyond the deeps of barrenness and abandonment within; whose very substance is made real when we have nothing left to show for the emptiness of our pain but the loneliness of our sorrow. Attend most diligently to the conversation. Attend when these raw truths are all we have. Attend when to do so seems for all but naught. Attend. Do not give up. For, somewhere beyond the bounds of all that we can understand, God is longing for us to hear words of tenderness and intimacy we cannot now begin to comprehend. Somewhere outside of all that we could ever dream or hope words of mercy and compassion for our living abound. Bring our prayerful hearts, our longing souls. Come. Sit. Pray and cry until we have no more to speak. Attend, then, gently, listening for the kind-intimacy of unimagined words of grace, and hope and love. Amen.

I've been very fortunate in my academic training: I was enough to study Job, in the early  '80's with Robert Boling (author of the Anchor Bible Commentary on Judges and with G. Ernest Wright on Joshua) at McCormick Theological Seminary, Chicago, who taught Job as a comedic teaching device for theological students in the rabbinic academy of the day.

At the same time, I was lucky enough to study with Walter L. Michel, at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago, who was between authoring vols 1 & 2 of Job in the Light of Northwest Semitic.

Two and a half years ago, over Thanksgiving weekend, my Jesuit Spiritual Director opened me to the challenge of praying and working through Pierre Wolff's, May I Hate God, a spirual exercise not for the faint or timid hearted.

To all three gentlemen, I am deeply indebted.