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Close to Home Job 38:1-7, 34-41  Just this week, there appeared a tiny article in the Topeka Capital-Journal, all of about 10 column lines with this small headline: WWII Bombs Trashed. It mentions that thousands of people in Hanover, Germany were forced to evacuate their homes “as experts disposed of three World War II bombs”. The bombs, thought to be American made, were dropped in an allied bombing raid in October, 1943. “Two bombs were buried in an open area, while the third was close to a house.”  I imagine very few people noticed or read this article at all. Had my wife Dottie not pointed it out, I too would have missed it. I relate to finding bombs. I remember vividly that years after the war ended, my grandfather dug up mortar shells from our backyard in The Netherlands, and the police were called to get them. Even more pertinent to this story: shortly after I was born in 1943, my father was taken away by the occupying German Army. (You understand that they didn’t exactly ask for his permission, nor did they consult with my mother.) They just took him, and forced him to work as a welder in one of their ammunition factories located in Hanover. Papa was making bombs, for the German Army. He never talked very much about his time as a forced laborer, but on one or two occasions he shared about hearing the Allied planes dropping bombs around and over Hanover. He told us that he and his fellow laborers (from Poland, France, Belgium, you name it) lived in hope that Allied bombs would destroy the bomb factory where they were working. They would go outside and jump and scream like maniacs, as he put it, waving their arms in a futile effort to get the attention of the pilots, who were of course far too distant to see them. “Hey, over here, over here, drop them right here, on top of us!” Their intense feelings towards the enemy outweighed their desire to live, and they wanted the bombs to obliterate them. “Come on, God – kill us all, go ahead! In the process, you will stop the enemy, stop the pain!”  It never happened. The bombs always missed the factory, at least as long as my father was there. Those American bombs didn’t kill my Papa, who 12 years later moved us all to America. Sometimes we experience such intense feelings of pain and anger, and we don’t know where to turn. Sometimes we even shake our arms and fists at God, and scream our anger, our pain, and our fear. Job does that also, for he too could not understand the cruelty and pain of his world. And the voice of God, echoing out of the whirlwind, powerfully reminds Job – and us – that there are, and that there will be, great mysteries. No matter how smart and how learned we may think we are, it is still God and only God who understands all, who has put wisdom in the inward parts, and who has given understanding to the mind. I do not know why my father survived, I really do not. I know only that this story was close to home.  - Pastor Piet - October 22, 2006