The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.’So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.
Blameless...sorrow, pain, suffering, God-permitted suffering...blameless.
Poor Job. I actually find myself fearing for the man. Will he hold up? Will his faith crumble? I imagine that mine would. I am hardly blameless. I am cynical enough that I would not be all together surprised by an unkind visitor such as Satan, but my faith might find itself in the garbage. I would not curse God. No. That takes too much work. I might find myself assuming God has nothing to do with me or my suffering. I can imagine myself saying "God is not in this."
God is nowhere.
I worked with a church that has an unusual group of friends within it. They did not go looking for one another, but they found each other at this congregation. They are from different generations, different socio-economic groups. They have one thing in common. They have lived to see their children die.
What always amazed me about this group is that they have not identified themselves with their suffering. Certainly there is comfort knowing that the people sitting in the pew with you have gone through similar tragic circumstances. But these people have managed somehow to identify themselves with the gradual renewal of their lives by the Holy Spirit within their relationships with one another.
I do not know if these people are particularly Job-like in their virtue and their faith. I don't know if one could rightly call them blameless. But in one another they have found the strength to go on and to eventually praise God for giving them friends to see them through such horror. They are witnesses to the rest of us that we are born for praise.
What Job knows, what God knows, and what these friends know is that in the end our lives our meant for praise. Can there be a more absurd notion? In the midst of the most commonplace experiences I forget this simple truth. How much more quickly do I forget when Satan puts his hand on my life?
Today I pray for the faith and wisdom of Job.
Posted by tripp at April 12, 2006 06:03 AM