Proper 22B 2009; The Book of Job part 1

Job’s suffering, because of his innocence, puts a lie to our most common explanations for the evil calamities befall us.
We want to think that we are suffering because we’ve been bad. We try to calm our fears by thinking that other's suffering is somehow connected to their moral state.
But this passage, with its clear teaching about Job's moral state means that anytime we want to make such a claim about ours or others, we have to make that claim with a disclaimer. The person who is suffering could in fact be totally innocent. It might be that they are suffering as punishment for their sins, but it’s possible that they are not.
And that changes things in a fundamental way.

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