One my favourite films is “Forrest Gump”. The film has iconic opening and closing scenes of a single white feather blown by the wind through the air – sometimes carried on an updraft, sometimes on a downdraft. This can have many interpretations – but the most obvious is that it is a metaphor for how the course our life takes is influenced by events that happen around us.
This is certainly the message from the film. Forrest Gump is a kind-hearted man from Alabama whose life seems to be directed by all the defining historical events in the post-war years of the United States. Through various personal highs and lows the film ultimately ends with Forrest leading a fulfilled life. He exercises no conscious control over the events that appear to determine the course of his life, but his uncomplaining and accepting attitude seems to carry him through.
Throughout his story he recalls: “My mama always said, ‘Life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.'”
We may feel we have lost control of our lives in the face of the events of the last few months – our jobs, our businesses, our social life, even our family life.
This is what happened to Job in the Old Testament story. Job’s book tells how a messenger came to Job and reported that bandits had attacked his home, killed his servants and stolen his all his animal herds. Then another messenger came and told him that whilst all his sons and daughters were partying, the house they were in collapsed in a storm and killed them all. Finally, Job is was struck with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. His wife tells him that after all he has gone through he may as well “Curse God and die”. But Job doesn’t – he keeps his trust in God despite all the ways that life has treated him.
Through the next forty chapters Job struggles to find reasons why God would let this happen. Job’s book never gives a direct answer – only that through everything God remains and works out everything in his own way.
Eventually what Job found out is reflected in Pope Francis’ Urbi et Orbi address a few weeks back as the Covid-19 pandemic took effect in Italy:
Like the disciples [in the storm-struck boat on Lake Galilee], we will experience that with Jesus on board there will be no shipwreck. Because this is God’s strength: turning to the good everything that happens to us, even the bad things. He brings serenity into our storms, because with God life never dies.
Jonathan Sandbach