Job 42: From the Whirlwind
BMCC Sunday Sermon · 10 May 2026 · Speaker: a brother who lives with blindness
That Sunday, Pastor Hong sat among the congregation as a brother in our community who lives with blindness stepped up to the pulpit and shared his own life story, taking Job chapters 1 and 42 as his text. Hong later said it was one of the most memorable sermons he had heard in a long time — because someone was willing to read Job’s story as a mirror of his own life.
At seventeen, this brother had confided to his church that he had been in a relationship with another man; the traditional megachurch he then belonged to arranged for him to undergo conversion therapy. Years later, he stood at the BMCC pulpit instead, holding those “corrective” years up to the light of Job.
He is visually impaired — a corneal transplant in childhood failed. Growing up, he lived through his parents’ divorce, his father’s business collapse, and the family’s financial ruin; he washed classmates’ laundry at boarding school for pocket money, and watched his mother very nearly give up on life at her lowest. Later he himself struggled with alcohol, and once nearly died of a heart attack. He read each of these losses as a Job-like stripping-away — “not only losing family and work, but my own body becoming a source of pain.” It was that courage, Hong said — to read Scripture through one’s own weakness — that gave the whole sharing its weight.
He pointed to an unsettling truth in Job 1: the calamity begins with God himself raising Job up in the heavenly court. Suffering is not the absence of God, but something that unfolds within his permission.
What moved Hong most was his reading of Job’s three friends — those who sat beside Job insisting, “You suffer because you have sinned.” Looking back on the years he was guided into therapy, this brother realised that the theology of reasoning backwards from suffering to guilt is of one piece with Job’s three friends. That kind of judgment, made in God’s name, can be harder to bear than the disaster itself — because even one’s standing before God gets defined by someone else. The whole room fell silent, Hong said, because so many present had once been on the receiving end of it.
In Job 42, God answers Job out of the whirlwind — offering no explanation for his suffering, only questions: Do you know how the heavens turn? Do you know why the wild animals live as they do? If you do not even know these, how can you presume to judge my plan for your life?
“When I would not accept myself, I could not see God’s plan for my life,” the brother said. “Losing my strength — even losing my sight — actually drew me closer to God.” Faith is not a transaction — “ask and you shall receive”; even when God does not immediately change our hardship, he remains with us. That Sunday he closed with a hymn, and the congregation received Communion together.
Blessed Ministry Community Church is a home that welcomes everyone — we believe God is present not only in moments of triumph, but in the moments we feel stripped, misunderstood, or even misjudged by our own faith community. If you are walking your own road through Job’s wilderness, you are welcome to join us on Sunday. You do not need to have everything sorted out before you can meet God.
