Tag: job

Job 4:1-21

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
            The Christian spiritual classic, The Dark Night of the Soul, was written nearly five hundred years ago by St. John of the Cross.  The basic gist of John’s observation is that God sometimes takes the Christian through dry times of hiding himself from the believer.  The pain of wondering where God is; having no answers to prayer; enduring uncaring and misdirected comments from well-meaning people; all these and more are inevitably part of the Christian spiritual experience.  The dark night of the soul is not to be confused with personal sinfulness.  Its origin is not in self, but God.  When one knows that personal integrity is intact, but trouble abounds, we need not immediately rush to the conclusion that something is wrong with us.  It may be the Spirit tossing us into a desert experience in order to test and approve our faith.
 
            Job’s “friend” Eliphaz offered one of those age-old arguments that bad things happen to bad people.  He asks:  “Who that was innocent ever perished?  Where were the upright cut off?”  His conclusion is: “those who plow iniquity reap the same.”  Certainly, Eliphaz thinks, Job cannot possibly go through such terrible suffering without having done something to anger God.
 
            Today the same notions still endure.  If I had a quarter for every time I heard comments like these I would be a rich man:  “he is poor because he is lazy;” “she has chronic health issues because God is punishing her;” “you are not healed because of your lack of faith;” “they did something evil to be in such trouble;” and on and on the wrong-headed statements continue, ad nauseum.
 
            The Apostle Peter understood how to view trouble in a healthy way:  “It is better to suffer for doing good, if that should be God’s will, than for doing evil.  For Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:17-18).  Jesus suffered; so will the Christian.  There is a big picture that only God sees.  When we suffer, there is something going on behind the spiritual scene.  We must allow God to do his work and trust him for all things.
            Lord God, I entrust myself to you because you know what you are doing.  Thank you for the trials of life which humbles my heart to pray.  Do your work in me so that my faith is fortified for a lifetime of service in the church and the world, through Jesus Christ, my Lord.  Amen.

Job 19:23-27

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year BLeave a comment
          There must be suffering before glory.  This is a truth that is difficult to swallow.  Jesus plainly taught his disciples that he must suffer and die before being raised from the dead and glorified.  We follow the same pattern:  suffering before glory.  There cannot be resurrection, new life, and glorious change without first dying to self, becoming a humble servant, and being last not first.
Job is one of the more familiar characters of the Bible.  He suffered like no person before him or since him.  Yet, his glory is like none other, as well.  In the middle of his agony, in the darkness of not understanding what was happening to him, and at the lowest point of his life there was the faintest but clearest glimmer of hope.  Job knew that his Redeemer lives.  Job had the confident expectation that his suffering meant something.  Job held out not a wishful thinking, but a settled hope that he would someday see God and that he would be redeemed from his torment.
As Christians, we may not understand everything about the Scriptures or theology.  Yet, we intuitively know in the shadowy recesses of our present sufferings that it will not always be this way.  We know that our Redeemer lives.  We know that there will be judgment.  We know whether our souls have genuine hope or whether they put up the pretense when asked, “How are you doing?”  “Fine” is the reply while we are dying inside. 
 
If the ancient response to suffering that Job expressed teaches us anything it is:  that we must be real about the raw emotional pain that is within us; and, that we must affirm the hope of redeeming deliverance and new life in order to remain patient and godly.
Suffering Savior, the One who took my place, thank you for dying on my behalf.  Help me through my present sufferings to see the hope of Easter.  Be gracious to me so that I might be gracious to others, even when I think so much of my own troubles.  Amen.