Job is the oldest book in the Bible, written long before Moses penned Genesis. In fact, it’s one of the oldest pieces of literature of any kind known to man. This ancient story asks a question that haunts us still: why do good people suffer?
Job was the richest guy around, but lost it all in a single day, even his health. His wife told him to curse God and die, but he couldn’t do it. That was sort of the problem. Job was one of the good guys, so why was God letting this happen to him? He had friends who tried to cheer him up by telling him it was his fault. While they talked, Job wondered where God was and why he had abandoned him. And the mystery of his suffering remained a mystery.
Then (in chapters 38 to 41) God enters the conversation. It is one of the most elegant speeches God gives in the Old Testament, but it never answers the big question, never resolves the mystery of Job’s suffering.
Instead, God remembers here what we often forget. People who are suffering don’t need explanations. There are answers to the problem of suffering – complex, well-thought-out answers that make perfect sense to a reasonable person. But they make little or no sense to someone in pain. And they don’t help, even when the hurting person demands them. What does help is companionship, someone to share in our suffering, someone to walk the hard road with us.
Somehow in this exchange God does this. He walks the road with Job. And when he speaks, it’s not to Job’s head, but to his heart. Job finds comfort in this. More than that, he finds God in a new way. His past experience with God was nothing compared to what he knew and felt now. It was the difference between hearing about someone and knowing them. Job says:
My ears have heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you, Job 42:5.
And that was enough.
(Now I’m crowding John’s blog tomorrow – sorry John.)
- Paul Abbott
Thanks for reminding us Paul that God is in the business of "walking the road with us". We just finished our G2 hiking season for the summer. The book we read had quite a few insightful words on the subject at hand. I quote: "The problem with RESULTS is that it can bring deceit. Whether I am succeeding or failing has little or nothing to do with whether I am on the right path. Most of us tend to judge our relationship with God by how things are going. When everything goes well, we assume we are on pretty good terms. If we are on a roll, it's because He's really pleased. When the roof caves in, we wonder what we did to tick Him off. But success and failure reveal nothing about our spirituality... Job got back double what he lost, but no one I know would sign up for his investment strategy. The results we experience prove nothing. God's plan and handy work have always been hard to see in the moment. They are best viewed through life's rear view mirror, often LONG AFTER we've passed through a particularly treacherous valley or enjoyed the pleasures of fleeting success." Larry Osborne
ReplyDeleteMay we be better friends to each other than Job's friends!!
I don't want to hog the blog but it doesn't seem like anyone will mind... The chapter on "Why results don't matter" (Spirituality For the Rest of Us) has so much more to say, I've got to share...
ReplyDelete"A VALLEY DOESN'T MEAN A WRONG TURN. God showed up again, asked a lot of tough questions that Job's friends could not answer and left never having answered the why question. The fact is, in the midst of a TRIAL OR FAILURE (UNLESS WE CAN SEE SOME DIRECT CONNECTION TO SPECIFIC SINFUL CHOICES), we can't know what it means.
Who's to say that Job ever had a clue his story would help so many of us? Let us not make the common decision of running from the valley, even when it's right where God wants us to be. FAITH AND OBEDIENCE always matter.
RESULTS don't."
I pray we choose to walk next to each other, without judging, in awe of HIM who WILL bring comfort.