“Nothing is so near to me as God. God is nearer to me than I am to myself.” —Meister Eckhart (c 1260–1328)
It’s hard to catch anything being said when it comes at us rat-a-tat-tat. But Job picks up one thought from Eliphaz’s last speech. His friend has inferred that God’s abode in the third heaven must be beyond the celestial heaven, and that makes Him a very distant Personage. Astronomers calculate the observable universe at 93 billion light-years across, a light-year being about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km). I don’t imagine Eliphaz was calculating 93 billion x 6 trillion in his head when he said, “Is not God in the height of heaven? And see the highest stars, how lofty they are!” (Job 22:12), but we’re all overwhelmed looking into the vastness. So was Eliphaz correct in his assumption? I’m comforted by Paul’s words at Mars’ Hill, where he explained that circumstances are used by God to incentivize the nations “that they should seek the Lord, in the hope that they might…find Him, though He is not far from each one of us” (Acts 17:27). Sometimes we wrongly read God’s silence as distance, or the spiritual distance of our hearts from Him as being the same as His distance from us. Thus laments Job, “Oh, that I knew where I might find Him, that I might come to His seat! I would present my case before Him” (Job 23:3-4). And again, “I go forward, but He is not there, and backward, but I cannot perceive Him; when He works on the left hand, I cannot behold Him; when He turns to the right hand, I cannot see Him” (vv 8-9). Then it dawns on him: I don’t have to see God, as long as He sees me! “He knows the way that I take; when He has tested me, I shall come forth as gold” (v 10). I may not know where He is, but He knows where I am, as well as every step I take, and what my final destination will be. It’s all good, and someday it will be all gold.