A human heart aches with a question that feels heavier than the world itself: "Why do we pass from the world like locusts and our life like a mist?" This cry comes from a place of deep suffering, a desperate need to understand the visible injustice surrounding him. In response to this profound anguish, a celestial messenger, Uriel, arrives. The expectation is for comfort or a clear explanation; instead, the angel offers a challenge. He presents a series of impossible tasks: "Go, weigh for me the weight of fire, or measure for me a blast of wind, or call back for me the day that is past." This conversation is not a simple exchange of information. It is a profound encounter between the finite mind and the infinite, a confrontation with the sheer scale of divine mystery.

Reflections

The divine character revealed here is one of profound, unhurried measure. The Most High is not swayed by the urgent cries of a single generation; rather, "the Most High on behalf of many." This God is a God of boundaries and appointed places, illustrated by the parable of the forest and the sea. Each has its domain, and chaos erupts when one tries to usurp the other. The angelic response to the question of "when" is not a date, but a process: a number must be completed, a measure fulfilled. God's perspective is cosmic, patient, and deliberate. He has "weighed the world in a balance" and "measured the times by measure," suggesting a plan that is absolute, orderly, and far beyond human comprehension or attempts to accelerate it.

This text validates the deep, painful frustration of the human condition. We are born into a "corrupt world" and feel trapped by it. The angel acknowledges this limitation bluntly: "only those who live on earth can understand the things that are on earth." We are not built to grasp the master blueprint. This leads to the profound despair voiced in the lament, "It would have been better not to have come into being than to come here, live in the middle of wickedness, suffer, and not understand why." The passage does not dismiss this pain; it frames it. Our inability to see the "why" is not a personal failure but a fundamental aspect of our created nature. We experience life as fragments: the smoke after the fire, the drops after the rain. We are creatures of the "after," struggling to understand the "before."

The core application of this dialogue is a radical call to humility. The angel's sharpest critique is, "You have judged well. So why haven't you judged well in your own case?" We are quick to see the folly of the trees warring with the sea, yet we constantly try to do the same: to impose our will, our timetable, and our limited understanding onto a divine, cosmic order. Integrating this passage means relinquishing the demand to know why as a prerequisite for faith. It means accepting our place as "those who live on earth" and focusing on the tangible things we can understand. It shifts our energy from angry inquiry about the heavens to faithful endurance within the world, trusting that the harvest has its own appointed time, much like a child in the womb, and cannot be rushed.