Job is a fascinating character with a fascinating story. Scholars tell us it is one of the oldest in scripture. And it wrestles with one of the oldest questions encountered by people of faith: Why? Why me? Why my kids? Why my marriage? Why six million Jews in the Holocaust? Or even those poignant words of Jesus from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34).

For the benefit of those who missed that day in Sunday school, the book of Job comprises 42 chapters in the Old Testament, much of which is an epic Hebrew poem to which there is a prose introduction to set the scene. Job is presented to us as the richest man in the Middle East, deeply religious, "blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil" (Job 1:1). As the story opens, Job is the subject of a conv…