In the end, who cares how productive that device makes you if you aren’t productive in what matters most to God. How will we love the Lord with all our heart, soul, strength, and mind, and love our neighbors as ourselves with our faces constantly pressed against a screen? Sure, the latest technology makes our lives easier, but is it also making them more meaningless? And if it is, where do we start drawing the line?

Every device you buy makes a promise, “I’ll make your life easier.”
You see a new phone, a new appliance, or a new app you’d like to try, and immediately you start thinking, “this will make my life so much better!”
And often the promise turns out to be true.
We purchase that new gadget or piece of software and it does make us marginally more productive, entertained, or efficient. Life is a little bit easier. But while we’re so enamored by the ways the technology makes life easier, we scarcely hear the second part of the contract.
Technology will make your life a little easier, but it will also make it a little more meaningless.
The Future is Here and it’s Disappointing
We are living in the future. At the press of a button, you can have any item you desire shipped to your home, any information you like poured directly into your brain. We have an abundance—endless entertainment options, unlimited methods to automate away tedium, and infinite access to every comfort imaginable. All thanks to our devices.
But our devices also take their pound of flesh. Do you ever look around at our world and wonder, “How can a people who have everything be so miserable?”
It’s the conundrum of our age: We have everything we thought we wanted, but somehow we’re still not happy. We have infinite content, so why aren’t we infinitely content?
Now, we could say the very obvious thing. They need, Jesus. And, yes, they do need Jesus.
But don’t you feel it too?
I know I do. And I have Jesus. But something still seems off. It’s like I’m desperately trying to get something from my devices; to scratch some mysterious itch. But the more I search, the more it eludes me.
The Life We’re Looking For
In his book, The Life We’re Looking For, Andy Crouch notes some of the unique features of the times we live in:

“The defining mental activity of our time is scrolling”
“The defining illness of our time is metabolic syndrome”
“The defining emotional challenge of our time is anxiety”

Crouch concludes, “So it is no wonder that the defining condition of our time is a sense of loneliness and alienation. For if human flourishing requires us to love with all our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, what happens when nothing in our lives develops those capacities? With what, exactly, will we love?” (59).
It seems we’ve struck a deal with our devices that so much resembles the bargains with the tricksters from the old stories. A genie appears to grant your wish. But once you have what your flesh desired you find you’ve lost something of yourself in the exchange. We wished for peace and quiet, and what we got was loneliness.
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We don’t need our why answered we need God.  We don’t need to know what God is doing in our suffering, what good he will bring about, we need God.  We don’t just need him when the suffering ends but as we sit in the dust and ashes.  And we’ve seen in Job that suffering doesn’t separate us from God, God has always been protecting Job and with Job even when it hasn’t felt like it to him.  If we have God then every other loss is worth nothing.  If we can’t say that yet, we ought to pray for God to open our eyes to who he is like he did for Job.

What do you long for when you suffer?  It’s an end to the pain.  It’s what we tell people when they face operations – it’ll hurt for a while but then be better, it’s what we hope for when we take someone to get treatment for an injury – something that will take the pain away and bring healing.  It’s what we tell people when they grieve or suffer a relationship loss – that the pain fades over time.  It’s one of the reasons why I think we find it hard to know how to help those with mental health struggles – because we know that this may be a long term need, with many dark nights of the soul.
And all too often relationship with God is postponed until afterwards.  We’ll think about God when we feel better, are in a better place, have more capacity.  But Job shows us how wrong that is, that we’re missing something.  Job is in a world of agony, he’s lost not one but all of his children, his wealth, he’s covered with sores and hovers near death, wracked with grief and all he has left is a wife who calls him to curse God and die and friends whose comfort only deepens his confusion, questions and isolation.
That’s where Job is as chapter 42 opens.  He hasn’t been restored he‘s still stripped of everything.  Still has nothing.  That makes his words here all the more amazing.  He’s comforted before he is restored – we must see that.  This is comfort in suffering not comfort from or after suffering.  This is the kind of comfort we need, our friends need, in the white hot heat, or pitch black oppressive darkness, of suffering.
God has just drawn Job’s attention to the two chaos monsters we looked at last week.  Behemoth and Leviathan, savage, uncontrollable, forces of evil and chaos that man cannot tame.  But who as created supernatural beings are on God’s leash, under his sovereignty, only permitted to do what God allows and who will ultimately be destroyed by him.
How does Job react?  (1-3)Firstly, Job confesses God’s absolutely sovereignty and might.  Back in ch38v2 God asked Job “Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?”  Now Job confesses that he was wrong, he spoke from what he knew and could see but “I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know.”
It’s always tempting to think we know what’s going on.  To look at the world and see what we can see and draw conclusions from it.  And so to assume it tells us about God, his love, his actions, his sovereignty or lack of it.  But Job confesses that as he did that he was hopelessly short sighted.  He couldn’t see God’s care of creation, he couldn’t see eternity and God’s plans, and it wasn’t immediately obvious to him that God was sovereign but now he knows.  “I know that you can do all things; no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”
This morning, are you ready to confess that?  Ready to say to God; Lord I have been wrong.  Lord you are the almighty sovereign ruler who is just and does what’s right, who governs creation wisely and rightly and does things I just cannot comprehend, I cannot see it all, but I know enough of you and your goodness and love and so I will trust in you not in what I see or what I think?
But Job isn’t finished because he’s learned something else(4-5), that he had a limited grasp of God.
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I need to be reminded afresh of a gentle, tender Lord who wants to heal our wounds and deal with our hurts. And because he has shed his own tears as the perfect God-Man, he is well placed to wipe our tears as well. Our God specialises in mending the brokenhearted and restoring the prodigal.

We are all broken people. We are all wounded. We are all hurting. We are all messed up. While this is true for all of us, many will try to deny it, or cover it up, or put on a brave face, or lash out to protect themselves. There are so many wrong ways that we seek to deal with our brokenness and hurt.
Some folks will pretend they are fully independent and have it all together and do not need the help of others. They are just kidding themselves. I know people like this. All their life they lived as someone who could solve their own problems, get along without the help of others, and be seemingly altogether independent.
But old age or something else will catch up with them and they lose much of their independence and they will start to really have to depend on others for their care and well-being. That can be a real shock to the system. They finally come to realise that they are not all that self-sufficient and they do not have it all together.
Others however know full well what a basketcase they are. They do not hide their brokenness and rejection and pain. They know they are miserable and feeling unwanted and unloved. Again, many can respond wrongly to this: alcoholism, or drug or porn addictions, or anger and hatred of self and others, and so on.
We all have these hurts and feelings of rejection. How we deal with them is crucial. With all this in mind, let me share something someone had put on the social media. I assume it is basically accurate. It is a moving piece, and we of course can get so many spiritual lessons from it. It goes like this:
Every once in a while, a ewe will give birth to a lamb and reject it. There are lots of reasons she may do this. If the shepherd tries to return the lamb, the mother might even kick the baby away. Once a ewe rejects one of her lambs, she will never change her mind.
These little lambs will hang their heads so low that it looks like something is wrong with their little necks. Their spirits are broken. These lambs are called “bummer lambs.” Unless the shepherd intervenes, that little lamb will die – rejected and alone.
Do you know what the shepherd usually does? The shepherd will take that rejected little lamb into their home, hand-feed it and keep it warm. They will wrap it up with blankets and hold it to their chest so the little lamb can hear their heartbeat. Once the lamb is strong enough, the shepherd will place it back in the field with the rest of the flock.
That sheep never forgets the shepherd’s love and care when their mother rejected them. When the shepherd calls for the flock, guess which sheep runs first? That sheep knows the shepherd’s voice.
The bummer lamb isn’t loved more, it just knows intimately the one who loves it.
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