Bible Study

  • I Wish I Was Never Born

    Job 3

    Seven days of silence, sitting in the dust with his three friends. No words. Just being together in Job’s time of grief and suffering. Did Job’s wife make food for them, some bread or meat? Did it rain? What about bathroom breaks, a place to sleep, bugs, heat, cold? So many questions. Maybe none of that mattered – a man can forget what food tastes like, and rain can go unnoticed. Job speaks.

    “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 3:3-4

    Job curses the day of his birth and the night of his conception. He wishes not for death but for non-existence. To have never been born at all. His lament in this chapter bring to mind six foundational beliefs:

    1. Life begins at conception (v3).
    2. The birth of a child is a joyful, light-filled day (v. 4, 9).
    3. The birth of a child is decided by God (v. 4).
    4. The birth of a child should be celebrated and remembered (v. 6-7).
    5. All men are equal in death (v. 11-19).
    6. A life of fear is worse than death (v. 25-26).

    Job’s faith peeks out from under his blanket of sorrow. He wishes he was never born, that joy was never sparked on the day he entered the world. He recognizes the abiding rest found at the end of life. He blames his current, lived-out misery on God, the giver of life. Yet, he cannot escape the truths buried in his suffering! God gives life. God decides when life is over.

    “Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For my sighing comes instead of my bread, and my groanings are poured out like water. For the thing that I fear comes upon me, and what I dread befalls me. I am not at ease, nor am I quiet; I have no rest, but trouble comes.”

    Job 3:23-26

    Such a scene! A dramatic monologue, driven by torment and dismay. Job is clear in his raw sorrow. He feels it all. He doesn’t hold back. The reader knows the reason behind his suffering, but Job was left in the dark. He is gutted, wrecked, and the reader sees the whole thing from origin to end. It’s a good story. It ends well, that is to say, there is resolution and redemption in the end. But there is turmoil and conflict first, hardship and grief…trouble comes.

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  • Sometimes, There Are No Words.

    Job 2

    “Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the LORD…”

    Job 2:1

    Again. A repeat of something that happened previously. An echo. Here we are…again. Here we go…again. Satan steps into the presence of the LORD, and God points to Job, His faithful servant, one of a kind, blameless and righteous, a man who fears God and remains a man of integrity despite crippling loss. A man who has seen trouble fly like sparks from a campfire. A man who has turned from evil, but has been unable to escape calamity and disaster. Job’s suffering is staked like a dog on a chain, coming back around again and again, pressing the limits of the chain. The Adversary levels further accusations (this is his wicked method):

    “Skin for skin! All that a man has he will give for his life. But stretch out your hand and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.”

    Job 2:4-5

    But Job doesn’t curse God. Even when Satan strikes him with terrible sores that cover his entire body. Even as he sits in ashes and scrapes his sores with a broken piece of pottery; even then Job does not curse God. And when his own wife – bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh – when she presses him to curse God, Job defends God. He responds with heavy theology, a deep belief in the foundational truth that God is God alone. He says,

    “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?”

    Job 2:10

    Can we pause a moment here to offer some compassion and sympathy to Job’s wife? She too has suffered great loss. She has watched the destruction of their wealth, experienced the loss of financial stability, but mostly, she has suffered the horrible pain of losing her children. She is a mother whose ten babies are buried in the dirt. These were children that she carried, nursed, cleaned, changed, fed, put to bed at night, snuggled, played with, taught, children that she raised to adulthood. She watched their footprints grow and carry them away from home. She knew where their bodies were buried when she charged Job to curse God.

    She is a wife whose good, kind, righteous husband is also buried, suffocating in grief, shame, and suffering. She speaks from her anguish. Her words are wrong. Her pain is real. She hears Job’s reprimand, but her response is kept from us. We don’t get to know that part.

    “Now when Job’s three friends heard of all this evil that had come upon him, they came each from his own place, Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite, and Zophar the Naamathite. They made an appointment together to come to show him sympathy and comfort him.”

    Job 2:11

    Job’s three friends come to comfort him in all his suffering. As good friends should. We make a meal to take to a single mom. We send flowers to those grieving the death of a loved one. Cards for the weary, a phone call to a hurting friend. We gather up the spilled-out joy, the broken ambitions, and we sit within the grief of those we love. Love grows when we do this, cords are strengthened and tied. This is how community is built. Sometimes, laying foundations is quiet work. Sometimes, there are no words…

    “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. 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.”

    Job 2:12-13
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  • Worship In The Dust

    New Year, New Morning

    Job 1

    “O dear Friend, when your grief presses you to the very dust, worship there!”

    C. H. Spurgeon

    We came from dust. Our bodies will die and decay and return to dust. Once or twice a week, a good housekeeper runs a soft cloth over her furniture to remove the thin layer of dust that has accumulated. She might spray the cloth with a polish or a cleaning solution. I say “good housekeeper” because although I keep my house, I would not place myself in that “good” category. Mainly, because the should-have list just grows…like the dust on my furniture. I would rather read than dust.

    Spurgeon preaches, “…when your grief presses you to the very dust, worship there!” I know he meant the dust of the earth. But, my vocation draws my mind to the grief-cleaning I do when life is too heavy. If the house is sparkling clean, what bad could possibly come? So I get off the phone with hurting family members and dear friends and clean my dusty furniture. Not once or twice a week, but as the grief presses me there. This is the kind of mindless activity that lets me pray and cry out to the God Who created me from dust. He draws my mind to Himself in the middle of heartache. It isn’t lost on me that He also could have prevented the heartache. He could have kept my dear friend from medical disasters. He could have prevented the death of my childhood friend. God could have healed the disease before the diagnosis. But He didn’t. So I dust.

    I dust and I pray. The dust I’m wiping away reminds me that we are dying cell by cell. Our skin is disintegrating into particles that float in the sunshine pouring through these old farmhouse windows. This is a good time to worship.

    “Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped.”

    Job 1:20

    Job received news that he had lost his wealth and all ten of his dear children on the same day. These were children he prayed for and consecrated to God. These were children he and his wife had raised to adulthood. Ten children. Gone. And his response was to worship in the dust.

    “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I shall return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

    Job 1:21

    Can I bless the Lord in every heartache? Can I offer praise and gratitude in all things? During the loss of a dear friend, or a difficult medical diagnosis? When family members are suffering, and friends are hurting? I can only grab my spray bottle and dusting rag and say with the Psalmist…

    “For God alone, O my soul, wait in silence, for my hope is from him. He only is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall not be shaken. On God rests my salvation and my glory; my mighty rock, my refuge is God. Trust in him at all times, O people; pour out your heart before him; God is a refuge for us.”

    Psalm 62:5-8
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