God Knows

"GOD KNOWS"

I am reminded of that wonderful line in Archibald MacLeish’s J.B., the Broadway version of the Book of Job as told in verse. Before the great businessman, the J.B. of the play’s title is brought down by the desperate circumstances recounted in the first two chapters of Job, one of J.B.’s friends asks for the secret of J.B.’s success. J.B. points out the window and asks his interviewer what the man sees. The man answers that he sees a road. J.B. tells him that he is correct, but goes on to ask where the road is going. "God knows!" exclaims the man as though to say that the knowledge was beyond him. Again, J.B. tells him that he is correct and claims the road to success is finding out what God knows about the road and where it is going.

In this answer, J.B. is both right and wrong. He’s right that God knows, but as he (and the biblical Job) discovers, God’s knowledge isn’t always passed along to us. We aren’t always ready to see the whole "cup" as Jesus described it. We aren’t always ready to see the "big picture" or even capable of seeing it. There are times that we simply need to be reassured that "God knows" and, if we truly believe in faith that God wants what is best for us, sometimes it has to be enough. Yet, sometimes, we need to strive to understand what we can because God has revealed what He knows in the Bible and in Christ.