I Just Don’t Know

Yesterday… Three ‘I just don’t know’ moments when I resorted to my phone…

…Stephen was explaining… Many years ago, as an apprentice, he learnt the term of abuse ‘monkey-hanger’… ‘You know the story?’ he said. I didn’t. My phone did:

During the Napoleonic Wars a French ship was wrecked off Hartlepool. The only survivor was a monkey, dressed in French army uniform. Simple Hartlepool folk, never having seen a Frenchman or a monkey before, concluded that this must be a French spy. They held a trial. The monkey, unable to answer their questions, was found guilty and hanged…

…Ian was describing a childhood friend who was interested in science. He had some device that was attached to his chimney… something to do with monitoring the weather… was it an anometer?

My phone told me… the word we were searching for was an anemometer… I remembered about gathering information about wind speed and direction. I’d just forgotten.

…Discussing 60s music… Freddie and the Dreamers? We remembered ‘Freddie Garrity’ (not confusing him with Freddy Mercury!) bouncing about stage Top of the Pops stage, singing ‘If you’ve got to make a fool of somebody’… but what was his greatest hit? Was he still alive?

The phone came out… ‘I’m telling you now’ was their greatest hit… We remembered their song ‘I like it’… Freddie died in 2006.

This morning’s reading… Job’s a good man who’s suffered with his children’s death, the loss of home, wealth and possessions, poor physical health, isolation from wife and friends… Big questions… ‘Why do good people suffer?’ ‘Is suffering punishment?’ ‘Does suffering always have purpose?’ Job just didn’t know.

Finally… God, who’s been apparently absent through much of the narrative, appears. He doesn’t bring some divine google reply to Job’s questions. There are things that Job can’t know or understand – and that’s OK. God is God. That’s enough for Job.

It’s enough for me too – there are  too many ‘I just don’t know’ questions that my phone can’t answer!