Year 1, Week 2, Day 1

I have a brief observation for today’s reading of Job 3-5.

Today’s reading begins a series of three cycles consisting of conversation between Job and three friends. Job’s friends are there to help. I believe that it is their intention to help. But they are not helpful. Job has personally experienced great suffering and sorrow. Today, we would say that Job has experienced trauma. While trauma studies are a new area of exploration in society today, there is nothing new about the reality of trauma. Job’s troubles and afflictions are so profound that he regrets the day he was born: “Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’…“Why did I not die at birth, come out from the womb and expire?” (Job 3:3,11). Job is expressing a deep despair.

What struck me about God from today’s reading was something of the surprising, even hidden, ways of God. Up to this point in our Bible readings, the things about God have seemed pretty clear and straightforward. God is great and good. God is good to all that He has made. God is just in response to wickedness, and yet is also merciful in His operations. The pattern of God in our readings so far is consistent. We might be tempted to conclude that we have God figured out. But Job’s understanding of God is about to be altered. God will still be revealed as great and good, good and faithful, just and merciful, but those character traits of God will take surprising twists: “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” (Isaiah 55:8-9). This does not at all mean that God is undependable or that He lacks true care and concern. But it does mean that the manner in which God shows His dependability and the means in which He manifests His care and concern, may not make sense to us at the moment (or even for quite some time).

While there will never be a moment that God abandons Job, God’s ways are such that it will appear to Job that he has been abandoned. God acknowledges in His Word that there are times that His people feel as though He has abandoned them: “How long, O LORD? Will you forget me forever? How long will you hide your face from me? How long must I take counsel in my soul and have sorrow in my heart all the day? How long shall my enemy be exalted over me?” (Psalm 13:1-2). God reveals that He knows that there are times that His people are very perplexed about His ways and even whereabouts: “O LORD, why do you cast my soul away? Why do you hide your face from me?…You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me; my companions have become darkness.” (Psalm 88:14,18).

And yet God is revealing that actually He is not distant from His people in their difficulties; He is at work amid the difficulties and in His people while they face their difficulties. While God’s ways are not to keep us from trials, it is true that He will see us through our trials: “Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him out of them all.” (Psalm 34:19). Suffering and sorrow need not be sought after; in fact, most of us will dread the thought of them: “For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, but trouble comes.” (Job 3:25-26). But God is with us. As He reveals that He has been with His people in the past as they walked through troubles and afflictions, so He is still with His people today. Even when we are quite sure that He has abandoned us, His Word is still true: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.” So we can confidently say, “The Lord is my helper; I will not fear; what can man do to me?” (Hebrews 13:5b-6).

And not only does God walk with us in our sufferings and sorrows, His design behind our troubles and afflictions are redemptive: “Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.” (1 Peter 4:12-13).

What struck you in today’s reading? What questions were prompted from today’s reading?

Pastor Joe

Ministries
Journey through the Scriptures