Reading Now

I feel like reading will never be the same for me now that I've taken this Biblical Foundations course. I have been reading 'What Looks Like Crazy On an Ordinary Day' by Pearl Cleage for another class (a book I am completely in love with), and couldn't help relating the Book to the stories and lessons in the Book of Job.

The book showcases a period of time in the lives of two women, Ava and Joyce, sister who lost their parents at a very young age and continue to face terrible hardships over the course of their lives. Ava contracts HIV unknowingly while Joyce loses both her children and her husband before she reaches menopause. The women find all they have is each other and their faith that they will be able to carry on to the next day and the next...

In one particular part of the novel, Ava is talking about Joyce's husband and how unfair it was for him to pass away. He was a very good man and had always lived his life virtuously, had to witness the loss of both of his children, and then died himself due to a freak accident. Ava says this:

'Mitch was the sweetest man I ever knew, and for a long time after he died, I kept thinking how unfair it was for him to die that way. I was still naive back then. I thought fairness had something to do with who gets to stay and who gots to go'(12).

Ava obviously felt at some point that good things were supposed to happen to good people and living mightily would prove to be a beneficial thing. Good things reserved for good people; bad things reserved for bad people (obviously the bad people would be the ones who 'gots to go'). Like Job, life began to take its course and she had no other option but to adopt a new idea about its proceedings. Sometimes very good things happen to bad people and bad things happen to good people and there really is no explanation for it. Strength is tested every day... some people survive it and are able to carry on and some people don't.

Before this class, I never would have associated this particular story with a Biblical story and wouldn't care to explore it. Now, I think I'm going to pick apart every piece of literature to see if it relates in some way to the stories told in the Bible.