This past Sunday the children learned about the suffering of Job.
For those who are unfamiliar, the story of Job teaches us about what it means to live in a world of pain and suffering and what it means to endure faithfully.
The story begins with everyone’s worst nightmare coming true. In one day absolutely everything good is taken away from Job:
His financial wealth and stability, his home, his children, and lastly even his health.
He went from the top of the world to the depths of complete desolation–In one day.
And the part that I can not even begin to fathom is how he chose to respond.
“Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped. And he said, “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong” (Job 1:22-24).
I don’t know about you, but I’m tempted to say, “Why me, Lord?” when I get a head cold.
Questioning God’s wisdom and goodness can tend to be my first reaction to even moderate amounts of suffering. “Why would you let this happen? What is going to happen next? What if ….”
I often approach the day as if things are supposed to be easy for me. Life ought to go from good to better. My story is meant to be a “happily ever after” where it becomes progressively happier and safer, and even more secure with each passing year. Right here, right now..
This is not reality.
We live in a sad and broken world. A world of sickness and natural disasters and financial downturns and political upheaval. We live in a world of war and recession and cancer. The future is uncertain. We don’t actually have that much control.
And being a faithful Christian doesn’t change any of that.
Except.
Except for our mindset. Our perspective ought to be different, radically different, from those without the hope of Christ.
Because there IS hope.
Not hope for an easy, smooth sail here in this life. But hope in the troubles, through the troubles and beyond the troubles.
Job was able to respond to his disaster the way he did because his ultimate hope was not in his good life. His ultimate hope was in the God who gave him every blessing to begin with. His hope was in his Redeemer who he would one day meet face to face, when all the sufferings and pain of this world are finally over.
“For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last He will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me! ” (Job 19:25-27).
As we approach Thanksgiving, a time to rightfully count our blessings and be grateful, I hope we can all remember Job, who, both with and without the good gifts, was able to lift his eyes to heaven and give thanks for the Giver of all things and say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”.