Job 42:1-6, 10-17; Mark 10:46-52

I don’t know if any of you saw the program Foreign Correspondent a couple of weeks ago on the ABC – but those of you who did may recall that it concerned an Australian journalist who had recently returned from Sumatra, where he had been filming the dreadful aftermath of the earthquakes in that region.  But what made this episode special, more than just another story about horrendous suffering and destruction, was a single, brief image of hope; the kind of hope that is unique to faith.

Job 23: 1-9, 16-17; Mark 10:17-31

A couple of years ago, the renowned naturalist Sir David Attenborough was being interviewed by Andrew Denton.  Denton raised the issue of Attenborough’s agnosticism, and in explaining why he found it difficult to believe in God, Attenborough made the following revelation:

I frequently receive letters from people saying, in effect, “You’ve travelled around the world, you’ve seen all the marvels of nature, how could you not believe in a loving God who created the world”.  I reply to these letters by asking their authors to picture an eight year old child sitting by a river in Africa.  That child is guilty of nothing more than the usual childhood foolishness.  And yet there is a worm burrowing under that child’s eyelid, a worm that can only exist by burrowing under the eyelids of children, and it will cause that child to go blind and live out their life in disfigurement and pain.  How can you tell me that a loving God created that worm to do that to a child?