All are welcome to join us for Sunday service starting at 10 am on Sunday, October 20th. We welcome United Harmony Hand bells, who will be enriching our service with their beautiful tones. Sunday School will run during the service and coffee and fellowship will follow the service.  We hope that you can make it to church!!

A reminder that the Ecumenical Mission of Strathcona County starts today with an opening service at 7 pm at Sherwood Park United Church.  This years speaker is Rev. Dr. Rob Fennell.  Click here to read the brochure.

Following are Rev. Marlene’s notes on the upcoming sermon.

Marlene’s Rev. Notes:

“Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind: “Who is this that obscures my plans by words without knowledge?” Job 38:1-2

In the span of a few days, Job experiences more tragedy than most people encounter in a lifetime.  He cannot even suffer with dignity, for he has to endure his wife’s taunts and his friends’ lectures.

Nearly every argument on the problem of pain appears somewhere in the book of Job. However, he appears to be suffering a crisis of relationship more than a crisis of spiritual doubt.  Through it all, Job steadfastly refuses to turn his back on God.  He has only one request: to hear from God directly; to hear from the source.

At last, God answers Job. Ironically, God makes his entrance just as Elihu is explaining why Job cannot expect a direct answer from God. Go figure!

American writer and theologian, Frederick Buechner, sums up what follows: “God doesn’t explain, He explodes.  He asks Job who he thinks he is anyway?  He says that to try to explain the kind of things Job wants explained would be like trying to explain Einstein to a little-neck clam.”  God does not need Job’s or anyone else’s advice on how to run the world.

Brushing aside 35 chapters’ worth of debates on the problem of pain, God plunges instead into a stunning poem on the wonders of the natural world. In effect, God asks Job, “Would you like to run the universe for a while?  Go ahead, try designing an ostrich or a mountain goat or even a snowflake.” God’s point is clear: If you can’t comprehend the visible world you live in, how dare you expect to comprehend a world you cannot even see!

Yet, the Book of Job leaves us with some challenging questions: Why do bad things happen to good people, and where is God in the midst of our distress? Also, if you were in Job’s place, what kind of answer would you have wanted from God?