What Job Was Really After

God never answered Job's question as to why it is that bad things happen to good people... But my guess is that it was not an answer that Job was really after, not some sort of theological explanation of the problem of suffering, which would have left him wiser than he was before but suffering still. I believe, instead, that what Job was really after was not God's answer, but God's presence. And of course that was what Job finally found because the way God entered the world without destroying it was to enter Job's heart even as from the depths of his heart Job cried out to him. And that is the way he makes himself present to all of us.

• from Secrets in the Dark