Day 37 & 38
Job
During the time that this "Journey through the Bible" brought me to the book of Job, our family was going through -- well -- the book of Job. I guess since then I've been having my own temper-tantrum with regards to those events and purposefully blocking myself from continuing this journey. It was just too hard. The events too unfair.
Thus the title of this post: The Retribution Principle. The belief that the righteous will prosper and the wicked will suffer.
The righteous person who had endured so much should have prospered. A wicked person should not have caused suffering.
But he didn't.
It did.
I remember as if it were happening now, where we were, what our family was going through, when I realized how that is just not how the world works. It's not how imperfect people work. As much as I want to believe in karma, it just doesn't exist. I can only believe in the one perfect God. His perfection does exist.
His purposes do perfectly prosper.
Sitting in that chair where I was reading this days passage in Job, I had to literally choke on these words:
"God's justice is beyond our ability to assess."
What stung more than anything in life thus far, was realizing the error in my belief that if God is just and truly runs the world, then the world must operate justly.
I've been in a seven month pause pondering that above sentence.
What soothed that sting since then, has been slowly, painfully, learning how to trust in the One whose insight, whose wisdom, whose purpose in pain, suffering, victory, defeat, is beyond my human understanding.
It's so easy to think that somehow we deserved any misfortune. That it was punishment for something. At the time we're going through such things it certainly feels that way. I guess if there's anything to come away with from the book of Job -- from life's suffering or disappointments, it's how false that belief is.
To understand the book of Job, life, is to switch from the obsession of "why" the suffering, to rather what purpose does God have for me in that suffering. What Glory of God is revealed through that suffering. In those disappointments. Along those detours.
It's hard to deal with questions like in Job 2:10 that ask, "Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?"
Gulp.
I vow to focus more on Job 6:10 --- "Then I would still have this consolation -- my joy in unrelenting pain - that I had not denied the words of the Holy One."
When He tests me, I want to be like Job 23:10 that says "....when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold. My feet have closely followed his steps; I have kept to his way without turning aside. I have not departed from the commands of his lips; I have treasured the words of his mouth more than my daily bread."
Why?
Because of what it says in Job 19:25 --- "I know that my Redeemer lives, and that in the end he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God; I myself will see him with my own eyes -- I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!"
Do you know how the book of Job ends?
Job 42:12 "The Lord blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first..."
Doesn't make pain, suffering, disappointment, or unfair things any easier to bear.
But it sure makes bearing them a little more worth it.
