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In the film, "Bruce Almighty", Bruce Nolan, a 'human interest' television reporter is discontented with almost everything in life. At the end of the worst day in his life, Bruce angrily ridicules and rages against God, and God responds. God appears in human form, endows Bruce with all of God's divine powers and challenges Bruce to take on God's work to see if he can do it any better. The film is a comedy, but it highlights some basic human reactions to God, reactions which are as old as life itself. Many of us rage against God when things go wrong in our own lives and ridicule God over natural disasters. Any natural disaster seems to act as a clarion call for derision of the idea that there might be a God, for how could a God of love allow such suffering?

These are also some of the themes explored in the Old Testament book of Job, a novel in the form of narrative poetry. Job is a good man enjoying a good life-style. He's healthy and wealthy, he owns land, he has a large family to help him farm the land and all of these riches are regarded by the prevailing wisdom of his day as God's rewards for good people.

But up in heaven, Satan claims that Job only worships God because he is healthy and wealthy. Take away all that, Satan tells God, and you'll find that Job will reject you as soon as things go wrong, just like every other human being, for human beings are a bad lot. God takes up Satan's challenge and risks all though Job. God maintains his confidence in Job as a good person, one who will remain good whatever happens. God permits Satan to do anything he likes to Job, except to take his life.

Things then start to go wrong for Job. He's struck down by terrible sores all over his body, every member of his family dies as do all his cattle. He's stripped of everything and ends up sick and alone, with all his wealth gone. But he still has friends and they proceed to do their best to help Job, only they don't go about it very sensitively. Again, these friends (known as Job's comforters) are a wonderfully true portrait of human beings.

Eliphaz believes that the innocent never suffer permanently. Since he believes that Job is basically a good man, he believes that Job's suffering will be over soon and tells him so. He says that even the most innocent of humans must expect to suffer and since all fall short of God's perfection, all deserve to suffer. He isn't much help to Job in Job's sorry state.

The second friend, Bildad is shocked by the way in which Job's family has been wiped out and presumes that to suffer such a fate they must have been very wicked indeed. He believes in the doctrine of retribution by an angry and just God. But he also sees that Job is still alive and therefore thinks that there must be some hope for Job. Again, he brings no comfort whatsoever to Job.

Zophar is the third friend who is even more hard line than either of the other two. In his mind there is no question. Job is guilty because he is suffering and even worse, since Job refuses to acknowledge his sin he is a far worse sinner than anyone could have imagined. as far as Zophar is concerned, Job is doomed and rightly so. Like the other two, he pleads with Job to repent of his sins and be healed by God.

But Job clings stubbornly to his belief that his is a good person and always has been and that therefore there must be another explanation for his suffering. In today's reading, Job rails against God and demands to meet with God face to face so that he can demand answers from God. But God can't be found.

"If I go forward, he is not there; or backward, I cannot perceive him; on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him; I turn to the right, but I cannot see him," says Job, bitterly.

God refuses to respond to a summons by Job, even though Job feels that he desperately and urgently needs God and is surrounded by darkness in which there is no glimmer of light. This is the fifth time that Job has asked to meet with God. On the one hand, Job is confident that if only he can meet with God and plead his case, he will be vindicated because he is a righteous man. On the other hand, he can't find God, God apparently refuses to meet with him and he has no idea what else God may have in store for him. Perhaps his troubles will get even worse, if that was possible. So while longing to meet with God, Job is also in awe of God and fearful of God's power.

It does so often seem that those who long to have an experience of God are denied. They hear of other people's wonderful spiritual experiences and pray for something similar so that they too might discover the reality of God, but it doesn't happen for them. They are conscious only of the absence of God.

The good news in the story of Job is that in God's good time, God did respond to Job. God didn't entirely accede to Job's request to meet him face to face, possibly because that would have destroyed Job, but God did respond to him. And this is also what happens to us today. In God's good time God does respond to us, but it may not be in the way we expect. Like Job, we need to remain upright and honest with our integrity intact no matter what happens. And we need to learn how to discern God in life all around us, giving time and space to God if we wish to meet with him.

If we do that, God will find us rather than us finding God and we too will enjoy a spiritual experience, eventually.