Wednesday, February 7, 2018
Then Job spoke again: “If my misery could be weighed and my
troubles be put on the scales, they would outweigh all the sands of
the sea. That is why I spoke
impulsively. For the Almighty has struck
me down with his arrows. Their poison
infects my spirit. God’s terrors are
lined up against me. Don’t I have a
right to complain? Don’t wild donkeys
bray when they find no grass, and oxen bellow when they have no food? Don’t people complain about unsalted food? Does anyone want the tasteless white of an
egg? My appetite disappears when I look
at it; I gag at the thought of eating it!
“Oh, that I might have my request, that God would grant my desire. I wish he would crush me. I wish he would reach out his hand and kill
me. At least I can take comfort in this: Despite the pain, I have not denied the words
of the Holy One. But I don’t have the
strength to endure. I have nothing to
live for. Do I have the strength of a
stone? Is my body made of bronze? No, I am utterly helpless, without any chance
of success. Job 6:1-13 (NLT)
Not many people want the experience, let
alone the responsibility of looking into the face of the kind of suffering which
robs people of all hope. As a pastor I
have visited people in that condition.
You would think that is reserved for nursing homes or prison cells, or
hospice houses only. But you find the
absence of hope in places you’d think it should flourish: board rooms, school rooms, saloons, and
sanctuaries; in these places and more there are people like Job, sitting in the
pain of their boils and memories.
What do you do when faith in the future hits
rock bottom? The simple answer you hear
all the time in church is: Turn
to God; He won’t let you down. But
what if you’ve already turned to God and you’re still suffering physically,
emotionally, intellectually, and in every other imaginable way? This was Job’s condition. He’d never denied God, yet there were those
boils covering his body, oozing the life from him, painful on his bed no matter
which way he turned. There was his wife,
whispering the euthanasia option to end his pain. There were his friends trying to
sweat a confession out of Job, wearing him down with argument and rationale as
to how he must have sinned to get God this mad at him; all this company, but no
comfort. And there particularly was
the indelible memory of his houseful of children, all killed in the collapse of
a building.
The one thing Job would have given every
final ounce of mortal strength in his body to hear was totally absent. The poor, suffering shell of a man wanted
only a simple reassurance from heaven that his life was not in vain; he wanted
God. Job wanted God to speak into his
life a word of assurance. He wanted to
know there was hope for him.
The Good News is that did happen…and
more! The end of the story is that Job
was comforted by God for all the stuff life did to him. In fact, on balance, the end of his life was
better than all previous years by quite a margin.
So the Lord blessed Job in the second half of
his life even more than in the beginning.
Job 42:12(NLT)
But the best part of that Good news is Job
got the one thing he couldn’t hope without; Job got the hand of God to massage
his spiritual heart back to hope. Like
the lady says in the back surgery commercial:
Job could live again!
For You Today
Is your “hope tank” running kind of low?
Job thought his was empty…but he turned to the only real
hope that exists, the Lord God, who also said:
I will never leave or forsake you.(Hebrews 13:5)
You chew on that as you hit the Rocky Road…have a
blessed day!
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