At least I can take comfort in this: Despite the pain, I have not denied the words of the Holy One. (Job 6:10)Now there was a real man. So many things had happened to Job and his wife that it is hard to believe. Yet he kept his faith.
Mrs Job didn’t know what to do. All she could see was her life lying in shambles and the man she loved in pain. And all for no apparent reason.
When the first round of tragedies happened – the loss of his children and all of his property and wealth – he said the Lord gives and the Lord takes away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.
Then the second round hit. He lost his health and his wife saw a broken man sitting at the town dump scraping his sore with a piece of pottery. Yet still he said: Despite the pain, I have not denied the words of the Holy One.
Her response? Curse God and die. You would be better of than you are now for sure.
But Job said no. He did not deserve these things, that he knew that for sure. And he told the Lord that in no uncertain terms. Yet they continued to come. And what is more, the Lord never told him why. He never told him that when it came down to it, it was just a bet between the Lord and satan over whether or not Job would deny God under duress.
But he didn’t, even though he was unaware of the bet. He remained strong and faithful even when stupid things were happening to him.
There was no real purpose to what happened to Job. At least not to Job’s perspective. In fact rarely is there a good purpose to tragedy. And God doesn’t send tragedy. He allows it to happen, which is different, and he uses it to his glory and to our own glory, too.
Furthermore there is sometimes no reason for these things happening. If Job had been bad, like his “friends” claimed him to secretly be, then you could understand it. But he was a godly man, one who worshiped God unabashedly.
The point of the Book of Job is that when things happen to the child of God that seem to have no good reason to happen, the child of God stays firm and strong.
I worship a mighty God. He could take away my cancer with the wave of his hand. He could heal Ella’s thrombocydepenia (blood platelet disease) in a minute. But he hasn’t. Instead he lets us suffer.
And I do not like it, not one bit. He never says I have to. I have to accept it because, Quite frankly, what can I do about it? Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. I cannot change it.
But I worship God even when the hits keep on coming. And I serve him even when I believe – and rightly – that life is not fair.
Change us, O Lord. Heal us. At least heal this wonderful woman who has spent her life in simple worship to you. She is too good to suffer like this. But I praise his name anyway. He is my God.
No comments:
Post a Comment
To comment, post your comment and click the anonymous button. It would be nice if you signed it so I could know who you are.
You are welcome to say anything you want as long as it is nice. If I don't like it, or it is ugly, I will take it off, place it into the garbage disposal, grind it up, and allow it to be flushed into the Gulf of Mexico where it will be eaten by a fish and then excreted where it will lie on the bottom of the ocean until it is covered up by other comments.