For today’s passage we pick up at verse 21: Job’s reply to his friend Bildad. Although Job can still not understand why his world has been turned upside down, his loved ones dead, his wealth gone and now even his so called friends, one by one, are telling him he must deserve this punishment for his own sinfulness.
How much should we be reminded of the great mercy of God our Father in heaven. Even to Job in his trial, God allowed Satan to test him but not to destroy him personally. When you or I suffer a trial, indeed you may even be in that time of suffering as you read these notes, do we stop and consider what we could learn from that suffering. I don’t know about you but often my knee jerk reaction is to have a good wallow and maybe wonder ‘why me’? Often in the midst of suffering it is very difficult, or even impossible for us to focus on a positive. A great and dear friend of mine, now departed, always used to say to me ‘the trick is to find the positive in the negative or to see the good before you see the bad’. I have tried to adopt this approach and with some success. I have to report that life is a much more positive place although I do admit to slipping back to bad habits on occasion.
We of course have the benefit of living after our Lord and Saviour died on the cross for our sins. In the words of the classic hymn ‘amazing grace, how sweet the sound, that saved a wretch like me’. For Job, he had no such comfort available to him at the time of his suffering only his friends, who over thousands of years even today are synonymous with being of no help at all. When we use the phrase: ‘Job’s comforter’ we are referring to the fact that his friends were no help at all in his time of need. They in fact go to great length to point out to Job that he must have done something really awful to be so afflicted.
Job is indeed an example to us of asking ourselves whether we have contributed to the issue through something we’ve done, but without falling into self-condemnation – or indeed blaming God for our trouble. It sometimes is enough to simply know that He is right there with us, carrying us when we need to be carried, and walking with us so that we never need to face anything alone.
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Dear Lord Jesus. Thank you, that by your word and sacrifice I know that whatever life may challenge me with, I am never going to face it alone, for you are with me even to the very end of the age. Amen.