According to my guest today, the book of Job, a book that we often don't know what to do with,

is ultimately focused on answering one simple question.

Are we truly, deeply safe with God?

How each of us answers that question for ourselves stands at the heart of what it means to trust God and cherish him above all else.

As Christians, how should we respond when we face a Job-like ordeal?

Suffering that is so painful, so inexplicable, so seemingly pointless that we're tempted to curse God.

In our interview today, I'm talking with Eric Ortland.

Eric is a lecturer in Old Testament and Biblical Hebrew at Oak Hill College in London, and

is the author of Suffering Wisely and Well, The Grief of Job and the Grace of God from Crossway. Let's get started.

Well, Eric, thank you so much for joining me today on the Crossway podcast. Thank you very much for

having me. I'm glad to be here. So, Eric, the title of your book is, Suffering Wisely and Well.

And presumably, you pick those two words wisely and well intentionally.

And I think most of us, when we think about suffering, we have a sense for why and what it would mean to suffer well.

That's kind of a common idea, it's a common phrase. It's hard to do,

but it's something that we understand. But I wonder if the idea of suffering wisely is a bit more

foreign, a little bit less obvious to us. So I wonder if you could kind of explain what do you

mean when you say we need to suffer wisely? What might that entail? Sure. That's really a

great question. The title for the book is meant to be interesting and meant to grab attention,

and it's meant to be a setup for the book of Job, which is the thing I deeply, deeply wanted to

talk about. When I started teaching, I knew nothing of Job, which is the thing I deeply, deeply wanted to talk about.

When I started teaching, I knew nothing about Job, and I had to start teaching it.

I expected the book to be helpful. I did not expect to be so profoundly pastorally relevant to so many people.

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