Sept 9

Job is a fabulous book. It's amazing that one man's suffering has helped generation upon generation of people. Having said that, I am soooooooooo not in the mood for it. I was all geeked up with Nebechanezer and thinking that the rest of Daniel was going to be next. I was really getting into the fact that the chronology of it is all clicking with me. I was thinking soon I'd be able to share my next "To the exact day" prophesy about Daniel's 70 weeks. And bam.....here comes Job.

The other popular Chronological Bible that is out there, puts Job in the middle of Genesis. It would be a big interuption to the story there too. He just doesn't fit neatly with any timetable and the charcters seem out of place with the rest of the 'story line' of the Bible. But isn't that the way with suffering? It never comes at the right time, it doesn't fit your time table and no one sticks to what seems to be the right script. I know that when we went through an extremely difficult time in our family, many of my friends turned their back. I know that some did not know what to say or how to be supportive, but some that I trusted and turned to actually gossiped about it and said very hurtful things behind my back. But we were lucky- many other friends supported us in ways that we never could have imagined. To this day I can't talk about it without getting choked up. And that's what I chose to focus on. Job didn't have that luxury- he had nothing left positive to focus on.

I think another thing that we can learn from Job is that we need to take our facts from God's Word not popular school's of thought. It was commonly thought that sickness and punishment were always a direct result of sin. This was a popular notion all the way up to Jesus time. Followers asked Him why a man was blind- because of his own sin or because of his parents (John 9:2). Jesus tells them neither. Job didn't sin either and his friends will do his best to get him to admit that he had. Sin does get punished but not ALL sickness is a result of sin. Just because something is a popular notion and has been believed for hundreds of years doesn't make it true.

Job 6:8-13 was especially beautiful. Job talks of his joy in the midst of his unrelenting pain. His joy, shockingly, is that he had not denied the words of the Holy One. And he wished God would just get it over with and crush him so that there would be no chance that he would deny him. I can't imagine that being a focus for me in the midst of the kind of suffering Job was facing.