This update is from last week’s meeting of ASK Daegu. Each member contributed something to the message that follows. We pray that our group encourages you in the same way that it encouraged all of us. We’ll have this week’s ASK recap up tomorrow.

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The metaphor in Job of a man digging deeper and deeper into the recesses of the earth to find something of worth, all the while finding nothing of true value, offers wonderful insight into the heart of mankind. Sure, treasures found as a result of exploration and tiring physical labor are beautiful and impressive. However, as the man reaches the end of his search, dangling dangerously in the dark, alone, with only the cold rock and oppressive darkness to offer him company, he understands that what he is truly searching for, the world itself cannot offer him. He discovers that his hunger for something the world ultimately could not provide him is not a trick or a mistake. He comes to learn that his craving that seems to stretch beyond the limitations of this world is a craving that only something free from the limitations of this world can offer him. God.

As the man turns to God and looks to Him alone for his fulfillment and value, the darkness is suddenly replaced by the all-encompassing light of the creator God. The man realizes that all of his desperation and toil in the darkness was not a result of God’s punishment or absence. His time in the darkness was a result of his own absence from God and his desire to find value in life apart from Him.

Through the encounter with the living God the man discovers wisdom and understands that wisdom is a gift and the truest treasure we have in this life. It is wisdom that not only transforms the man; once a slave to self-validation and worship through works and ability, to a man remade in the image of God, who receives the light of God and then blesses those around him with that same light.

We all are seeking, but few of us are finding. The reason for this is not that there is nothing to find. The truth is that we are burdening ourselves searching where there is no light. God offers us light through Jesus Christ and it is our choice whether or not to be graced with the light of his wisdom and life and be changed.