Emmanual walked with his angel in place of solitude protected by folds and rollings of the earth, away from any man’s sight, and where only Heaven above could see. The pastures were low grazed save the tops of Indiangrass and bluestem bunches whose course late-season stems were avoided by the ranging cattle leaving their heads to set and finish seed.
They were the grasses that covered the land before man sought to improve on God’s making; dividing vast prairie into sectioned lines first with wood and later wire fence, when the deep roots of God’s placement were replaced by shallow, water-needing grasses with easier harvesting seed that burned and browned in the heat of long summer suns when the Indiangrass and bluestem flourished. When left alone, without external support, and managed for the green of the pasture and not a pocket, it was the natives that returned, and as Emmanual aligned the seasons of his life and herds to the patterns of God’s making, he believed the native and deep root grasses of before-colonial man would return to high stands and covering of his land.
Emmanual walked with his angel as the sun held in southeast sky, shining through cast of high clouds that filtered and broke its purity of light into fan of beams that fell gold in compliment to the deeper gold-brown of Indiangrass seedheads and the brighter change of hedge trees in the bottoms along dried creek.
Emmanual spoke to his angel, “I read the Book of Job yesterday,” she answered.
His angel smiled, locks of golden hair and eyes, blue like the sky, compliment to the living heavens from which she came. His angel listened.
“I’d never read it completely, only listened to the beginning and heard how it ends. I knew he was a man of prosperity that lost everything by God’s willingness to allow the devil to test him. I knew by his faithfulness, all he lost was returned to him in greater way, but I never knew the rest of the story, and the rest of the story is really the whole point.”
“And what is that?” his angel asked.
“It wasn’t the devil that sought to destroy and drive Job to disavow God.”
“But wasn’t that his stated intent when God allowed him to destroy his family, his herds, his home, his health, his name?”
“Yes, but after the simple meanness, the cruelty—which is maybe all the devil can do, for God protects man and shields the devil from doing more. The finishing act of another’s faith comes from man himself.”
“How so?”
“The devil drove and left Job in state of despair, but it was his wife that told him to disavow God and die.”
“And what did Job do?”
“He dissented. He affirmed his faith and accepted the state God beset upon his being, ‘Thou hast spoken like one of the foolish women: if we have received good things at the hand of God, why should we not receive evil? In all these things Job did not sin with his lips.”
“But he still failed, did he not shortly after disavow God and curse the day that he was born” his angel teased in playful mirth knowing full and well there more to the story, but in challenge of Emmanual for response in examination.
“All men break,” Emmanual answered. “Failure is part of the test. What is faith that is never challenged. Faith only begins and shows when one continues to profess, believe, and follow when they see no reason or evidence to continue.”
“For what reason?” the angel asked.
Emmanual paused, searching for an answer. “…It is Faith. It doesn’t come with a logical reason. It is outside reason, otherwise it would be a postulate and scientific experiment and testing of God, which we are not called upon to do…It is Faith.”
“And what does man expect to get from his Faith?” his angel further pressed.
“…The blessing, should God so will…”
The angel smiled, accepting of his answer.
“Now why do you say it is man himself that seeks to destroy another’s faith? Why do you not blame the devil?”
“Because the final piece to Job’s challenge came from those he regarded as his friends. His friends could not perceive or understand God’s testing and permission to allow Job to be challenged. They saw through the logic—reason—of the world and not in spiritual understanding, and for the final piece to Job’s destruction by the devil’s beginning, his friends beseech Job again and again to attest to sins he has not committed, to treasons against God, to pride, to evils to which Job lived no part; and as Job denies the charges against him, it is his friends that begin to go mad and reprimand him even further for Job continuing to defend both his own faith and the justness of God, even as he remains in a condition of despair.
Job’s friends will not accept his innocence, and in the judgments of the world and their own perceptions and convictions, they persist in projecting their own condemnations upon Job’s spirit.”
“Why is this important if Job has already decried God and his life?”
“Because a man who accepts false accusations as his truth—who submits himself to the judgment of the world in surrender to his own exercise of spirit and conviction—is forever broken and divorced from the lifeline of sustained and continued faith. He accepts the darkness projected onto him and denies the light and salvation of reconciliation, and possibility for further and returned blessing, when his eyes and spirit are made to look low onto judgements of the world and not high to the Wonders and mysteries of God.”
“And how is Job returned to blessings before God?” asked the angel to Emmanual.
“Job is confronted direct by the voice of God, is questioned for his disavowal of God’s judgment for allowing himself to be exposed to pain and loss; and when confronted, Job reaffirms that God is just, that God has his reasons, that such reasons are beyond the understanding of man…he affirms his faith again—direct to God—just has he did before the friends that sought to break him in self-condemnation of wrong perceptions and erred judgment of others.”
“Why does the judgment of others matter?”
“Because there is an element of Faith that requires self-assertion and defense of one’s right, even when illogical, when attacked and condemned in confrontation, even by the well-meaning and perceived righteous, fixed to judgment and understanding divorced from acceptance of the unknown that is God’s will to man.”
“And what does Job receive for the passing of his trial?”
“Even greater Blessings than before.”
The angel smiled, a radiance of light in presence that rose from nature of spirit as well as gold of the casting sun. The angel moved with a wave of hand, and a cool wind stirred in the warmth of sun’s gold light. She turned in confrontation of Emmanual, “Now, what does Job’s story mean to you?
Emmanual gazed over the short-grazed pasture, on the heads of the native grasses returning to deep roots. He thought of his herd—dispersed—uncertainties ahead.
Confronted, Emmanual answered. “God is good. God is just. If we are to prove and affirm our faith, we must all be confronted to tests. There are moments we must fail, and after our failures, only then do we learn the power and purpose of our faith; that the good lord giveth an taketh away, and that whatever is lost may be restored, even if changed or in new way, should we proceed in living affirmation of our faith.”
The angel stilled her arm, leaving it to fall again in rest upon her side, and the wind through air stilled as arm rested in repose. The air and sky sensed warmer in the after stillness of the sky. Shift in cloud scattered rays of the sun to flare as if exhalations of breath from living light.
“You are still in beginning of your testing,” his angel spoke, “but you discern the process and the purpose. Hold true. Bear the trial,” the angel spoke, “and you, too, shall learn the blessings.”
Sky changed. His angel, the rays of breathing light, departed.