Wednesday, October 21CallingWho Sent You, day 5
The Cause I Knew Not
I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out.
DevotionalWednesday, October 21
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Job says these words from the ash heap. Chapter 29 is a ruined man remembering the work he can no longer do: the seat at the city gate, where elders heard disputes and the poor brought their case. Read what he misses most. The fatherless who had no one to help him. The widow whose heart he made sing. And this:
I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor: and the cause which I knew not I searched out. (Job 29:15-16, KJV)
“Cause” is a courtroom word, a case brought for judgment. Job went digging into the case of someone he did not know. Nobody assigned it to him. Nobody would have blamed him for missing it.
This week has asked one question five ways: who sent you? Here is where most of us quietly cheat on the answer. We pick our people. There is a reward in being needed by the ones who make us feel good at the work, and the heart steers toward it without asking permission. So we serve the grateful ones and the causes we already understand. The stranger with the messy file stays a stranger. We call it boundaries, and sometimes it is. Often it is fear with a nicer name.
Job could only remember that search from the ashes. Jesus walked it all the way down. He was eyes to a blind beggar on the road out of Jericho and feet to a man lowered through a roof. He came “to seek and to save that which was lost” (Luke 19:10). He searched out your cause before you knew you had one, then took the verdict on himself. Whatever sent you out the door this morning starts there. You are his before you are useful to anyone.
So receive this as you go.
May the God who came looking for you give you eyes for the person you have been walking past. May he make you feet for someone who cannot get to the hearing or the visiting room alone. If your seat at the gate has been taken, if you are reading this in a cell or between jobs or sitting in your own ashes, may you find the calling was never the seat. It was the people, and there are people where you are.
Now go find the case you do not know yet. Read past the first page of the file. Ask the name of the one you always nod at, and use it.
The One who sent you went looking first. Follow him in.
Pray
Lord, I have chosen my people. I have served the ones who thank me and stepped around the ones who would cost me. I have called fear wisdom and called comfort a boundary, and you have seen every bit of it. Forgive me. You searched out my cause when I was a stranger to you, and you paid for it in your own body. I am yours before I am useful. Give me eyes today for the person I keep missing, and the courage to learn what I would rather not know. Send me, and go ahead of me. In Jesus' name, amen.
Practice
Pick one person whose situation you have kept at arm's length (a client, a neighbor, a coworker, a relative) and ask them one real question today about what they are up against. Then listen all the way through without trying to fix it.
Carry
Go find the case you do not know yet.