Today in God's Word—May 2023
East Tallassee Church of Christ
May 29, Job 3
”Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, ‘A man is conceived.’ Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, nor light shine upon it." - Job 3:2-3
Whether we witness or experience some calamity, I suspect most folks have asked, "Why?'' When someone dies young, or suffers long, we wonder about the reason. Something happens that we cannot grasp how it could be God's will, and we may sound like an inquisitive three or four-year old child, incessantly asking "Why?" Job experienced calamity and unspeakable physical and emotional trauma. And Job asked, "Why?" I’ll come back to that before we're finished here.
The biggest section of the book of Job begins in Chapter 3 and continues through Chapter 37. God speaks in the last section, from Chapters 38-41, with a couple of meek responses from Job. The resolution of the story is in the final chapter, Job 42.
The largest section is a record of the conversation between Job and his friends who came to visit him at the end of the last chapter. The words are impassioned and the many of the sentences are styled with formal eloquence. Everybody had sat in silence for a week in shock and awe over Job's pitiful condition. But once he and the friends started talking, they made some really long speeches. In their exchanges, which are really more like essays than informal conversation, the speakers explore and espouse. They speak of philosophy and theology, infusing both with their experience and observations.
Job begins with a heartbreaking lament that can be succinctly summarized as "I wish I had never been born." He curses the day he was born, but he does not curse God. His misery colored his thoughts and his words in a dark palate of pain, sorrow and questions without answers. But there is no sign in this speech of blaming God or abandoning his trust in God. Job referred to
mythology to express himself, talking about Leviathan and "the eyelids of the morning," a reference to the mythological god Shahar, the god of the dawn. But that doesn't mean that Job believed in any God but the one true God. Our language (like his) is steeped in words borrowed from mythology. We cannot say the days of the week or name the months of the year without referring to several mythological gods.
Perhaps the saddest thing about this speech is the half dozen times Job cried, "Why?" Why didn't I die at birth? Why was I swaddled on my mother's lap and nursed at her breast? Why was I not stillborn? Why do the miserable have to see the light of day? Why did those who are bitter in their soul be given life to live? The questions go on. Remember Job didn't know any of the back story you and I know from the narrative in Chapters 1 and 2. He didn't know of the conversations between Satan and God. He surely must have wondered why. As the conversation with his friends will show, his experience did not match the popular understanding of why people suffered. He was mystified and broken.
"Why?" may not be the best question to ask God, but Job was not condemned for asking it again and again. Even if it is not the best way to deal with a problem before the throne of God, may I humbly suggest a few reasons possible for why some unexplainable things take place?
For those who put their faith, confidence and trust in our absolutely sovereign God, we must accept that God in some way, for some purpose, willed it to be so. Be very careful with this one. Our limited understanding may not be able to fathom why God would will or allow a thing. But that lack of understanding is no justification for abandoning faith or blaming God in angry rage at what seems so unjust to us. God willed it for a reason beyond our comprehension.
These unexplainable matters may reveal the condition of our hearts and the strength of our
faith in God. We may need the pain of not understanding to realize how dependent we are on God for strength and mercy. In that wounded heart, we may discover as Paul did about his thorn in the flesh, that God’s grace is sufficient for us. And maybe God will use the unanswered "whys" to draw us closer to him. We may get a stronger sense of how weak, helpless and clueless we really are when we are confronted by dark mysteries we cannot fathom. When we endure inexplicable sorrow and agony with faith and patience, we may become bright shining examples to others. Job lived thousands of years ago, and we are still talking about his amazing trust in God today.
I would like to think that Job's friends might be able to help his feelings. But as we will see in the chapters to come, their sympathy quickly turned to accusation and judging their suffering friend with no compassion for his agony. Let's resolve to never follow their ugly example of making a bad situation worse by our words!
Copyright © 2023 by Michael B. McElroy. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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