Calling Us by Name - Tuesday Devotional
A devotional written by Rev. Roy Atwood
Job 19:23-27a (CEB)
Oh, that my words were written down,
inscribed on a scroll
with an iron instrument and lead,
forever engraved on stone.
But I know that my redeemer is alive
and afterward he’ll rise upon the dust.
After my skin has been torn apart this way -
then from my flesh I’ll see God,
whom I’ll see myself -
my eyes see, and not a stranger’s.
The Old Testament book of Job tells the story of a wealthy, religious man with a comfortable life. Satan tells God that Job’s religiosity is based on his prosperity, so God allows Satan to ruin Job’s life to test him. Job and his friends debate whether he is to blame for his fate, so God reminds them that the universe is beyond the understanding of mortals. Job maintains his faith in God, and God restores his life to its previous glory. Scholars believe the book was written sometime between 600 and 300 BC.
Job’s voice carries through centuries - raw, aching, and astonishingly resolute. Sitting in the dust of loss, surrounded by friends who interpret his pain as punishment, Job does not ask for vindication through argument or revenge. He longs for permanence - that his cry for justice might be carved into stone, unerasable even by time. What begins as a lament becomes something more than defiance. It becomes faith.
“I know that my redeemer is alive,” he declares. The word redeemer - go’el in Hebrew - means one who restores, one who claims kinship strong enough to bring someone back from ruin. In the laws of Israel, a go’el was a family member who paid the ransom for a loved one or defended their name when others would not. Job envisions such a figure as a living reality - a presence rising from the dust to stand beside him when all else has fallen away.
Even as his body fails, Job imagines an encounter with the divine. “From my flesh I’ll see God,” he says - a vision of intimate recognition, seen through his own eyes. It is a breathtaking affirmation: that even amid decay, there remains a thread of relationship, a spark of recognition.
In this brief, searing passage, hope emerges as endurance within suffering - the conviction that divine relationship persists beyond every collapse. The One who redeems is alive in the dust with us, still rising, still calling us by name.
- Rev. Roy Atwood, Associate Minister of Finance and Administration