For two whole chapters, about 70 verses, God starts asking Job... in many different ways ...just what he really knows.

I suppose Job you know where light comes from or what the source of darkness is?
I suppose you have walked on the floors of the oceans and been to the depths of the seas?
I suppose Job that you've seen the gates that guard the world of the dead?
I suppose Job you know how to make the laws that guide the stars and seasons, and that if you tell the clouds to rain they'll tip up and pour water on you.
I suppose Job that it must have been you that taught the Hawk how to fly and built into it knowledge of north and south, east and west, implanted in it all the mystery of instinct and purpose.
And Job, it was you that made the ostrich so stupid that she leaves her eggs on the ground where they get trodden on? I'm sure that must have been you, Job.

After 70 verses of this, God wants to know what Job's answer is. Job says, "Oh, I think I've said more than I should". Is that the end of it?. No, for another 2 chapters, 50 or so verses, God lays down the same argument, all the time with great sarcasm. It possibly reaches a peak in Chapter 41 where God talks about 'Leviathan"

'Leviathan' in Hebrew mythology was a great fearsome legendary monster, thought to be able to cause eclipses of the sun under a magicians touch; a sort of Godzilla, King-Kong, dinosaur with the moral attitude of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini all rolled into one.

'Listen Job,' says God 'Could you catch Leviathan with a fishing hook? And if you did would he say, "Oh no, please let me go". Would you put a string round him and take him home to amuse the servant girls and play with the children?"

Job by this time is flabbergasted. He can't answer. God has challenged him, "If you know so much, tell me about it". At the end of all this ridicule Job can only conclude that when it boils down it he knew nothing. That he spoke about things he didn't understand. That all he knew was what people had told him, and a lot of that was nonsense.

Then in verse 5 of Chapter 42, at the end of the book, Job speaks these words, "But now, I have seen you with my own eyes!"

"But now, I have seen you with my own eyes!". Despite his circumstances, terrible though they were, when God spoke, Job was forced to look beyond himself into the awesome mystery of the world which surrounded him.

A world with no stock answers. A world to great both in its mystery and it's terror, in it's inconsistency and it's power, in it's awfulness and it's wonder.. to great for him to contain or fully understand. A world of wonder in which lay more things unexplained than had been explained. A world so intricatly tied up with the creative work of God that God was not distant, but as close as breathing.

By taking Job, in the way that God did, through that process of discovery, of seeing his own clumsiness, of laughing at himself, God brought Job into His presence to such a degree that Job declared, "I have seen you with my own eyes"

You and I, we can come to church.  We can sit in a pew with our stock arguments, our cement-like convictions, with all our prejudices and misconceptions unruffled.  When we do that, I sense God needs to say to us, "If you know so much, tell me about it!"

Job was a man of God. God said to Satan, "Did you notice Job, there is no one as faithful and as good as he".  Yet before Job could say, "Lord, I have seen you with my own eyes", he had to be in a position to laugh at himself, a place where he had to acknowledge that all he knew was nothing in comparison to the awesome creative work of God that went on around him day in and day out without him even acknowledging it.

To truly know God, I suspect we must travel to the same place.  To be able to laugh at ourselves and to say that whatever we know is nothing compared to what God knows about us.  To humble ourselves before God and simply say, "You are my God. You are nearer to me than I dare believe and I will follow you wherever you lead."

In Jesus Christ we see one in whom all that sense of wonder we've been thinking of is focussed. People, when he dwelt amongst us, couldn't sort it out. What was He up to?  What did He really mean?  The more they tried to know the less they seemed to grasp.  He didn't fit the formulas, didn't meet the criteria. He was so contradictory yet made so much sense. We see in the life of Jesus, life of a dimension, of a depth, of a love of which there is no comparison.

As we meet around tables ready for communion, we should allow the living Christ, in the power of His Spirit, to fill us with a sense of wonder. All of us have different needs and worries and problems. God knows every single one. He hears every prayer, reads every thought.  We must be content to leave our lives in His hands; not in any sense of disillusioned abandonment, or with grudging reticence, but with simple trust and childlike sincerity.