Day 2 on the Road to Easter
Lent Reflections #2 2026 from author Alison Lloyd
Who endowed the heart with wisdom or gave understanding to the mind?
Job 38: 37
Before this, Job has questioned why he has been made to suffer. And this is how God answers. ‘Who gave you the ability to think?’ — that’s what He’s saying, in effect.
When I stop to think about it, it’s an amazing thing that we have consciousness at all. Trees are complex living beings but they aren’t conscious. AI is powerful and impressive but it’s not conscious. People are. And because we can think, we try to make sense of our world. It’s a God-given faculty, as this verse points out. But there’s also a lot of irony in this question to Job. We understand things only because God gives understanding to us. And we understand only as far as he gives it to us.
I like things to be organised and systematic. When I read the Bible I don’t usually jump all over the place. I tend to read my way through one book at a time. (Or maybe two — one Old Testament and one New). I sign up for Bible plans on an app. Ticking off each day gives me a sense of purpose and progress that I like. But I am starting this series of reflections without a plan. It’s just a record of the thoughts I am having about God during this period, mostly sparked by what I read in the Bible. So it seems a bit random. I don’t know what I’m going to be writing about from one day to the next. I’d prefer to know, but this way I have to put confidence not in a plan of my own, that I see and understand, but in God’s plan that I don’t see and don’t understand.
With the understanding that I have, I respect the greater understanding of the one who gave it. I accept that I don’t know everything. I accept that God does.
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