Once a friend of mine went swimming in a large lake at dusk. As he was paddling at a leisurely pace about 100 yards offshore, a freak evening fog rolled in across the water. Suddenly he could see nothing: no horizon, no landmarks, no objects or lights on shore. Because the fog diffused all light, he could not even discern which direction the sun was setting.

For thirty minutes my friend splashed around in panic. He would start off in one direction, lose confidence, and turn ninety degrees to the right. Or left--it made no difference which way he turned. He would stop and float, trying to conserve energy, and concentrate on breathing slower. Then he would strike out again, blindly, of course, for he had lost all orientation. He was utterly lost until, finally, he heard voices calling from shore and was able to guide himself by the sounds.

Something like that feeling of utter lostness must have settled in on poor Job as he sat in the ashes and tried to comprehend what had happened. He too had lost all landmarks, all points of orientation. Where should he turn? God, the one Person who could guide him through the fog, kept silent.

The whole point of the "wager," in fact, was to keep Job in the dark. "Does Job fear God for nothing?" Satan had asked. Anyone will trust in a God who spoils his favorite with the greatest wealth in the Middle East. But remove all props, withdraw into the darkness, and then see what happens. The moment God accepted the terms of the wager, the Fog rolled in around Job.

God ultimately "won the wager." Although Job questioned everything about God in a stream of angry outbursts and bitter complaints, and although he despaired of life and longed for death, still he stubbornly refused to give up on God. "Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him," Job defiantly maintained. He believed when there was no reason to believe, when nothing at all made sense. He believed in the midst of the Fog.

Job stands as merely the most extreme example of what appears to be a universal law of faith. The kind of faith God wants seems to develop best when everything fuzzes over, when the lights get turned off, when the Fog rolls in. As Paul Tournier said, "Where there is no longer any opportunity for doubt, there is no longer any opportunity for faith either."