Job 3:1-26

I got my reading done yesterday, but didn't have the internet to publish.  That is one of the pitfalls of having to share the internet with other people (internet that only hooks up to one computer at a time).

At the end of chapter two, Job's friends arrive.  They don't recognize and when they do, they go through the ceremonial acts of mourning you often find in the Old Testament: tearing their clothes, weeping and crying loudly, sprinkling dust on their heads.  Then they sat down with Job in the ashes and no one spoke for seven days.

Job is finally the one to break the silence and from his mouth comes the bitterness that must have been building inside of him. He wishes he'd never been born; he curses the day that he was, wishing he'd been stillborn.  And since he wasn't still born, why could he not simply die now?  It is clear that Job loathed his life.  Is there a stronger word then loathed?  Abhorred?  Despised?  He wished for darkness and that death that makes the princes same as the poor, where people cease to trouble, where slaves are free. 

Notice Job says in v. 25, "For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread falls upon me."  In the beginning of the book, Job sacrificed from a healthy, respectful fear of the Living God.  When he sacrificed for his children, it was in the concern that they may have sinned.  But he never says, "Lest they have sinned and God strikes them down."  He did not seem concerned for their demise.  Yet, as his trials begun, it is likely he began to fear more and more another one coming.  And on such a day as he had when the second calamity struck on the heels of another, how could you blame him?  During that interim time between the first strike, taking his wealth and family and leaving him with a bitter wife, would Job have not begun to fear that things perhaps could get worse?  After all, he did have his health.  What if it was taken, too?  And now it had been.

Aren't we often like that?  Something horrible happens and we begin to wonder, what next?  What else can happen?  We hope, surely, nothing.  After all, what we just had was enough, was it not?  And yet we still fear.  Job acknowledged that the Lord gives and the Lord takes.  He asked his wife, "Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?"  God is sovereign.  I believe it was Tree63 that first produced "Blessed Be Your Name", correct me if I'm wrong.  It says in the bridge, "You give and take away, my heart will choose to say, Lord, blessed be your name."  How easy it is to sing that song without taking in the words!  But I was suddenly faced with that after I had my daughter.  God gave me this beautiful little girl to love and raise.  What if He took her away?  Would I still be able to say, Blessed be Your Name and still mean it?  It was hard to do just thinking hypothetically.  But I could not, would not sing the song if I didn't mean it.  I hope and pray that if that ever happens (and I hope and pray it never will!), that I might still be able to honor the Lord with my lips and my heart.

Today's reading: Job 4:1-5:27