'For He knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust.' Psalm 103:14
The book of Job is a study of crisis, calamities and challenges. It also lays out a simple message, life is difficult and not the airy-fairy success stories that the modern multi-media like to spin for us.
Furthermore, life can be unfair, What can we say to someone who at the pinnacle of life is struck down by severe cancer? Or how can we console parents who have just delivered a child with multiple congenital defects?
There is really no answer we can provide that will satisfy nor comfort the anguished soul suffering such calamities. The biblical Job suffered untold miseries and his struggle to find some sanity to all that he experienced have been used by Christians to try to survive unexpected and unsought crisis. Many a Christian will cling on to the lessons in this Bible book to withstand the challenges of an unfair hand.
Job was a man, loved by God for his uprightness and envied by Satan. God was proud of Job, "Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him, he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil." Job 1:8. In order to prove God wrong and thinking that Job's faith would buckle under pressure, Satan asked God's permission to inflict extreme suffering and misfortune on Job. And God allowed it.
Throughout the ordeal, Job searched for answers including listening to opinions of four friends and his wife. They blamed Job or blamed God for this predicament. There are no easy answers.
The apostle Peter was also acquainted with suffering. He wrote, "Dear friends, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that has come on you to test you as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice inasmuch as you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when His glory is revealed." 1 Peter 4:12-13
Gradually Job understood although he could not fully explain his misfortunes fully. Timothy Keller surmised (Ref 1), "Suffering can refine us rather than destroy us because God himself walks with us in the fire? But how do we actually walk with God in such times? How do we orient ourselves toward him so that suffering changes us for the better rather than for the worse? Keller too left some questions unanswered.
John Piper observed that suffering cannot be explained by the simple principle of retributive justice, where each person gets what he deserves: suffering for the evil and prosperity for the good. Often in life, it is the righteous who suffer and the wicked who prosper. But suffering is not dispensed willy-nilly among the people of God. It is apportioned to us as individually designed so that our faith might be refined, our holiness might be enlarged, our soul might be saved, and our God might be glorified.
Throughout Job's ordeal, God was ever present although Job may not even have realised this because for a long time, God was silent. Yet, in the end Job's fortunes were restored twice over. Despite crisis, calamities and challenges Job did not blame God. The Job Suite by Michael Card explained:
Blameless and upright, a fearer of God
A man truly righteous, no pious façade
One about whom God was accustomed to boast
And so one whom Satan desired the most
One day the accuser came breathing out lies
"It's Your holy handouts, his faithfulness buys"
In one desperate day his possessions were lost
His children all killed in one raw holocaust
His children all killed in one raw holocaust
And yet through it all
Through the tears and pain
He worshiped his God
Found no reason to blame
Once more the Deceiver denounced and decried
"It's skin for skin, and hide for hide,
Strike down his flesh and he'll surely deny
And confess that his praying has all been a lie."
"Very well, take him, " the Holy One sighed
But you must spare his life, my son shall not die
So Job was afflicted with terrible sores
Sat down in the ashes to wait for the Lord
Sat down in the ashes to wait for the Lord
And yet through it all
Through the tears and pain
He worshiped his God
Found no reason to blame
Rev (Dr) Leonard Wee, Registrar Trinity Theological College of Singapore wrote a Lent meditation (Ref 2), "In the midst of life's challenges, it is sometimes easy to forget that we have a God who loves us deeply, and whose mercy and compassion would never fail. When situations become discouraging, we wonder if the Lord is going to withhold His mercy. Yet it is also in life's most difficult challenges that we often experience the lovingkindness of God."
Lionel
Ref 1: Timothy Keller. Walking with God through Pain and suffering. Hodder and Stoughton 2013
Ref 2: The Bible Society of Singapore. From Fear to Faith, Daily Devotions for Lent 2021. Sower Publishers, 2021.
