Before I get started, I would like to put to rest a rumor which I started.

There is no truth to the rumor that Pastor Ben saw these lessons today and decided that this would be a good Sunday to take off.

But I wouldn't have blamed him.

A while back, Disney did a movie version of the book Alexander and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day, which is, as far as I understand, not a remake of the book of Job.

But it could be.

I mean, that's a pretty good title for this section that we had

that Mary read today. But this section is chapter two mostly. We read a little bit of chapter one

and then we skipped over the rest of chapter one and read chapter two because that's what's in the

lectionary. And I want to go back a bit because this is not the only bad day that Job has had.

In the book of Job, Job will have three different plagues that are visited on him.

I'm going to go back to the first chapter of Job because just after the part that Mary read,

again in that chapter, Satan, whose name literally means

the accuser, walks into the throne room of God with the other angels, and God says,

Have you seen Job? Isn't he great?

And Satan says, yeah, sure.

But you've given him everything.

You've protected him.

You built a fence around him.

If you take that away and you allow me to take away the things that you've given him,

he will curse your name.

And God says, okay. And so in the mother of all terrible, horrible, no good,

very bad days, Job gets the news from four different servants, four different messengers,

...