For a generation so exposed to crises in different forms, it is easy to assume that people have learned to become stronger, wiser, and more resilient. Popular culture often reinforces Nietzsche’s confident maxim, “That which does not kill me makes me stronger.”¹ While it seems to be an encouraging thought, it overlooks the frailty of our humanity, the limits of our emotional endurance, and the deep cries of the soul.

Asian countries, including the Philippines, have endured typhoons, floods, and earthquakes; political tensions, systemic injustices, and economic regressions; a pandemic that reshaped our times; and even geopolitical instabilities that loom over the daily struggles of individuals and families. These experiences have not automatically produced strength. It would be insensitive to expect one to be strong in the face of such challenges, especially when help is not offered. This can even lead us to ask whether producing strength is the primary goal of suffering. In the Filipino experience, suffering does not necessarily lead to resilience but to dalamhati, that deep inward grief that Dr. Federico Villanueva describes as being painfully endured in obscurity.² It is this kind of inward pain and heaviness that makes explanations or quick solutions inadequate.

A Descent into Grief

Job faced such deep grief long ago. Calamities devoured his possessions (Job 1:13–17), killed his dear children (Job 1:18–19), and brought excruciating pain upon his whole body (Job 2:7). While he initially responded with devotion and worship toward God (Job 1:20–22; 2:9–10), he eventually knelt in grief on a mound of dirt and wailed out a curse-lament upon his birth, life, and existence—bleak poetry describing the collapse of his world as he knew it, leaving him in an unsettled restless state (Job 3:1–26).

The majority of the book, set to poetry, finds Job rambling and wrestling through three cycles of dialogues with his friends, Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar, and longing to hear from God. Armed with the conventional wisdom of their time, the friends try to explain and to convince him that his suffering is an outcome of his sin, yet they fail to help him in the depths of his pain. Job knew that his suffering was not a consequence of any specific sin, thus his friends served as “worthless physicians” and “miserable comforters” (Job 13:4; 16:2). Yet through the suffering man’s words, posture, and thoughts, we (the readers) are invited to come to terms with our own sufferings, to be honest, to struggle, to cry out to God, and to wait upon Him in faith amid the blackest darkness. In pain, Job continued to cry with hope:

As for me, I know that my Redeemer lives,
And at the last He will rise up over the dust of this world.
Even after my skin is destroyed,
Yet from my flesh I shall behold God,
Whom I myself shall behold,
And whom my eyes will see and not another.
My heart faints within me! (Job 19:25–27, ESV)

The Encounter of God Through Creation

At last, God does answer Job! As Dr. Mona Bias writes, “Yahweh was there all the time, even when Job did not sense it.”³ He speaks not with clear-cut explanations about suffering or injustice but with a revelation of his constant presence and work in the world. Scholars note that God does not directly address Job’s concerns.⁴ Yet God answers Job from the whirlwind (Job 38:1) and confronts his lack of knowledge about him.

God’s speech presents a glorious view of creation, including its boundaries, its rhythms, and its raw beauty (Job 38–39). Where Job wishes he had never been born and that darkness would swallow his reality (Job 3:3–10), God speaks of dawn breaking forth at his word and the flourishing of light and life-giving elements in the world (Job 38:12–15, 19–33). Where Job imagines the undoing of creation, God reveals the interwoven order and wisdom by which he designed, made, and sustains the world (Job 38:4–15, 25–38; 39:1–30).

David Atkinson observes that God’s revelation functions as a journey toward Job’s wholeness. In confronting Job with the breadth and beauty of creation, God brings healing to his being. The effect is similar to how one who is distressed is gradually restored when brought to experience magnificent sceneries in nature, such as a garden, a sunset, or a waterfall.⁵ Compared to explanations, an excursion through creation becomes deeply therapeutic. It reminds and assures us that God is near. He is here, giving ear to our cries and holding us and everything else in his hands.

Transformed Even in Uncertainty

God also reveals to Job a world he keeps in order, though its workings remain hidden. The fierceness of the sea is limited by God’s command (Job 38:8–11). Darkness is surrounded by light (Job 38:12–21). The weather and nature’s elements follow God’s set seasons (Job 38:22–38). The stars and the planets are held exactly in their place (Job 38:31–33). The living creatures that he gives glimpses of (Job 39:1–25; 40:15–41:34) testify to a creation that cannot be fully mastered by humanity, yet each one of them exists within boundaries God himself sets. Even the untamable Leviathan (Job 41:10–11) represents realities outside of human control and is restrained by God alone, who rules over everything.⁶ Accordingly, evil and suffering in our world may seem endless and difficult to understand, but they are held back by our infinitely wise and sovereign God.⁷

By the time God finishes his speech, Job still has no direct answer to the reason for his suffering. Yet he emerges with a life-transforming encounter with God. Humbled by the limits of his understanding, he acknowledges God’s sovereign power over all things and reorients toward a deeper faith in him (Job 42:1–6). Even before the epilogue (Job 42:7–17), Job already receives a deeply grounding truth that we too can anchor ourselves on: God is constantly present and at work even in a turbulent world. And so he responds:

I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear;
But now my eye sees You;
Therefore I reject myself,
And I repent in dust and ashes. (Job 42:5–6, ESV)

The sufferings we too face amidst geopolitical tensions and injustices may drag on and remain unresolved, but Yahweh, the same God who met Job in the whirlwind, is the one who strengthens us with real hope, reminding us that even here within the darkest and fiercest continuing storms of life, he will continue to firmly hold us and all things in his sovereign wisdom and infinite power.

Prof. BJ Villanueva serves as the Chair of the Biblical Studies Discipline at the International Graduate School of Leadership. He is also an ordained minister at Christian Bible Church of Las Piñas and a field worker with Action International Ministries. He and his wife, Beng, have two children, Jake and Kady. Currently, he is pursuing a PhD in Biblical Studies at the Asia Graduate School of Theology-Philippines.