Mine

The Old Testament reading set for Morning Prayer today is Job 28, which begins:

‘Surely there is a mine for silver,

and a place for gold to be refined.

Iron is taken out of the earth,

and copper is smelted from ore.

Miners put an end to darkness,

and search out to the farthest bound

the ore in gloom and deep darkness.

They open shafts in a valley away from human habitation;

they are forgotten by travellers,

they sway suspended, remote from people.

As for the earth, out of it comes bread;

but underneath it is turned up as by fire.

Its stones are the place of sapphires,

and its dust contains gold.’

I love the use of the earth as an image for the human being, the creature made from the dust of the earth—dust that contains seams of gold—and of the minister as miner, swaying suspended between the seen and unseen, between two worlds of sunlight and deep gloom, often remote from people’s sight, working to draw out from a congregation what is hidden from themselves. And of the common goodness of human life—out of the earth comes bread—and the deeper work forged by God through the circumstances that turn us up in the inner places, as magna churns through the earth’s crust, leaving sapphires in its wake.

What a deep calling, to be a minister of God’s grace! What a calling, deeper still, to be a human being, a creature in receipt of that grace!