We don’t understand death. Illness, disease and all the relatives of pain. These challenge our sense of mortality and question our grasp of purpose.
Why did God make it this way?
Wrong question. God created mankind in his image. Sin brought forth death and suffering out of our disobedience to a Father’s command.
Just like understanding death, we cannot eat of the tree of all knowledge the fruit of what the spirit will endure. Death brings judgment of decay and suffering. But what of the spirit resting, the spirit awakened from death?
Why a man can hardly understand the fall of adam, let alone the fall of angels. Yet angels and adam rebel against the righteous authority of Almighty God. These fallen ones affect our lives in ways we cannot know. Yet unseen scores of angels answer the righteous beckoning of a loving heavenly Father, who looks upon the mortal and eternal lives of His own.
A Story of Suffering
We think we know this oldest of stories of a man whose final blessing we cherish. He received twice the blessing. Fair enough. That’s worth some time when God will not help. Right?
You don’t really believe that, do you? At least, not if you are the suffering one or the one living every minute with the anguishing pain of a dear loved one. This is the story of Job we quickly overlook on the way to the double-blessed ending.
Job 1:
There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.
Question #1
Would that be a man like you? Or a woman like you (if that is your gender)? Was Job a man like me?
Certainly not. I am a sinner time and time again, certainly not ‘blameless‘ nor upright before the Lord God.
[ctt title=”תָּם – täm – blameless: complete, perfect, sound, wholesome, morally innocent, having integrity” tweet=”How are you doing at ‘blameless’ minute by measured minute of your mortal life?” coverup=”jaG0i”]
The fallen angel of disobedience challenges God:
“Does Job fear God for no reason? 10 Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land…
Isn’t that how we pray to the Lord?
Hedge us in. Protect us. Give us those double blessings. It’s as if our mortal minutes were all about God giving us a gardens of blessings in all that we do.
Is that why the Lord created man?
Job’s Bad Day
Job didn’t bring on his own distress as we often do. Yet put yourself in this loving father’s place as he hears of the fates of the sons and daughters he has raised.
15 and the Sabeans fell upon them and took them and struck down the servants with the edge of the sword..
… “Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, 19 and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you.”
… the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” – Job 1:21c
Would that have been your (blameless) reaction?
Me neither; but it gets worse. Once again, Satan challenges the Lord at the integrity of Job.
Job 2:
“Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. 5 But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”
7 So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head.
Can you imagine any righteous man suffering like this, though he is blameless? Image the constant suffering, the pain this man endured.
8 And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes.
11 Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place…
12 And when they saw him from a distance, they did not recognize him. And they raised their voices and wept, and they tore their robes and sprinkled dust on their heads toward heaven.
13 And they sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great.
Tragic Suffering
Have you ever seen it? (Did you for a moment blame God?) Was it your wife, or a parent, perhaps even a child…
Why such suffering!?
Job’s friends came to him because of the report of the evil Job was suffering. The story of Job in the Bible clearly not only shows us the unseen origin of Job’s tormentor, the fallen angel Satan, but also describe Job’s suffering as evil.
רַע
[ctt title=”The evil of suffering sometimes seems larger than God.” tweet=”Remember, though, the Lord suffered for your sins and for mine.” coverup=”Sm646″]
Wickedness, mischief, hurt, trouble, affliction, ill, adversity, harm and other suffering often leading to death have nearly disappeared from our mortal consciousness.
For like good, evil has become a measure of no meaning in the minds of mankind.
Job goes on to lament his very life. Have we not done that when in great distress? Have we not questioned God’s motives in the suffering of man, especially those nearest our mortal hearts?
All the lessons of life taught from Moses to the Prophets to the Revelation of Jesus Christ to John show suffering – consequence of the disease of sin, yet a hope of redemption and cure of righteousness, resurrection from the suffering of this fragile flesh.
To be continued…
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