So, after not really reading anything out of my Bible for a number of months (no excuse for this, just being transparent), I felt a great need to open to the book of Job. I have read this book before a time or two, and it is not one I particularly enjoyed or pretended to understand. But the need was strong so I decided not to go into it either with harsh judgments or make anything foreboding out of it and just see what I could learn from the text.
So…Musings of Job from the eyes of a normal, admittedly struggling stay-at-home Christian mom.
The scene:
Beth, I’m so sorry to tell you but while you were away at the store, there was a fire at your house and your entire collection of scrapbooks containing every picture of your family and representing hours upon days upon months upon years of hard work and memories have been burned up.
Beth, I’m so sorry to tell you but there was a lightning strike too and it fried your computer with every shred of work you have ever done for missions in regards to Malawi. Every email lost. Plus every blog you wrote gone. Every digital picture you have ever taken of your family destroyed forever. Everything that you have defined yourself by for a lifetime is entirely gone.
Beth, I’m so sorry to tell you but when walking into school together, the roof caved in over the entryway and your four children were crushed beneath it. You are no longer a mom. You will never see their little faces or hear their sweet little voices again. So very sorry.
Oh, and Beth? You have cancer. A really nasty kind that actually won’t kill you, but you’ll wish it did a million times over before it is miraculously cured.
My thoughts:
Just shoot me now, please and thanks. A preposterous succession of events, surely. But not for Job. How in the world did he deal? And blamelessly? With hurt and anger, sure, but never denouncing God?
It’s easy to assume he must have been a tick away from Christ in character but I’m not sure this is necessarily accurate. Chapter 1, verse 1 describes Job as “blameless, upright, fearing God and turning away from evil.” Upright, fearing God and turning away from evil? For me, for the most part, check. It’s that blameless thing that gets me all confused. So here is the commentary I found interesting. Blameless: Job was not perfect in the in the sense of being sinless…The writer is asserting here that Job could not be justly charged with any moral failure by his fellow men. From the human point of view he was without blame.
Well, now. Human point of view is certainly reliable, no? Ahh, not so much. So here is my take. Job wasn’t super-human. He was more like us than we might think. Don’t we tend to look at each other and see the things we admire on the outside and assume that person is “better” than us? More moral? More blameless? A better mom? A smarter businessman? But inside we know better, don’t we? Job was blessed with wealth, possessions, community respect and family...and also a strong belief in a loving and good God. Can anyone relate? But there had to be more to the man. Things that were hidden. Fears and uncertainties and anger and sin. Because Job was a man, not divine.
So the burning question, and the reason for the book of Job is this: what was inside Job’s inner character? Satan wanted to know was Job serving God because of God’s blessings…or in spite of them? What would happen when the man was stripped of everything worthy but his strong belief in a loving and good God?
I wonder what would happen if it were me?
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