To me, parts of the Job passage in next Sunday’s lectionary read like an agenda for science…. measuring the earth and so on. God challenges Job with the sheer amazingness and incomprehensibility of creation. I don’t think it’s disrespectful to try and understand nature: in a way it can be like an act of worship, a way of celebrating what is. And there will always be new mysteries – it’s like peeling an onion eternally.
The other option for an Old Testament reading is about the suffering servant. Who is the servant? The faithful person or prophet? The people of God? Jesus? Any and all of those – even when not in the writer’s intention. That is, sadly, what it’s sometimes like to serve God in a world of enmity. There is a mystery here too – that the nature of God’s love for us is such that love hurts, even for God. Our God is no stranger to pain and suffering.