When Pain Outweighs Piety

Scripture Focus: Job 3:1
1 After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.

Reflection: When Pain Outweighs Piety
By Erin Newton

Sometimes we believe that suffering in silence is holy. To accept all that God allows without complaint is to be righteous. We have been encouraged to know that to live is Christ and die is gain (Phil 1.21).

When chapter 3 begins and Job curses the day of his birth, you can hear an audible gasp. Michael Brown points out, “Although Job’s agony has been exquisite, he has been the perfect model of godly restraint.” You expect the most righteous man of his day to be willing to accept the events of his life. His silence, even his rebuke of his wife, is testimony to his faith. But pain has a way of breaking barriers of restraint.

Reading the book of Job is a lesson in reading with patience. Has Job renounced his faith in God? Are his words a sin? Can complaints be a violation of our trust in the Lord?

The new year has unfolded before us—a day often marked with hope, optimism, and lofty dreams. But that is not always the case. When the year 2023 began, I sat in the darkness of my soul, knowing that the year would not be one of hope. The anticipation of grief clouded my mind. I looked toward the future and wished, much like Job, that I could have avoided this part of life. Despite all the good things I know God gives to us, I wanted nothing of it.

Had I renounced my faith in God? Were my pleas, “God, I did not want this life,” an act of disloyalty to our Lord?

Having walked in this darkness for some time now, I can tell you with clarity of spirit—no, I never once let go of my faith in God. I have found in the brutally honest confessions I am able to express faith more genuinely than before.

And so it is with Job. For a week, Job sat in the silence of his pain. When he spoke, he did not mask his heartache with toxic positivity. He was honest, and in his honesty, we find hope.

Some tragedies are too costly for words. Some pains too inexpressible to capture. (Some moments too sacred for social media.)

And some pains need the overflow of bitter, harsh, pointed, and honest words. God is a better friend than Job’s friends. He listens to the depths and hears our pleas.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Save me, O God, by your name; in your might, defend my cause.
Hear my prayer, O God; give ear to the words of my mouth. — Psalm 54.1-2

Read more about New Days Begin in the Dark
Job’s despair led to a desire for deconstruction, uncreation, death. It’s a common thought process.

Read The Bible With Us
The new year provides a fresh start for spiritual disciplines. Join us in reading the Bible with us at a sustainable, two-year pace.

https://mailchi.mp/theparkforum/m-f-daily-email-devotional

Greater Footstool, Greater God, Greater Redeemer

Scripture Focus: Job 2.1-2
1 On another day the angels came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came with them to present himself before him. 2 And the Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” 

Satan answered the Lord, “From roaming throughout the earth, going back and forth on it.” 

Job 19.25
25 I know that my redeemer lives, 
and that in the end he will stand on the earth. 
26 And after my skin has been destroyed, 
yet in my flesh I will see God; 
27 I myself will see him 
with my own eyes—I, and not another. 
How my heart yearns within me!

From John: We return today to this reflection from 2020. Understanding how low Jesus stooped in the incarnation depends on considering the height of the heavens from which he stepped down. May we, as Job did, gaze in wonder and worship. How my heart yearns for him to step down again. Come, Lord Jesus.

Reflection: Greater Footstool, Greater God, Greater Redeemer
By John Tillman

As Job begins, Satan walks the Earth and has power over it. Before Job ends, he declares the promise that the Redeemer will stand upon the Earth to reclaim it.

Job is one of the places in the Bible depicting cultural beliefs about the cosmos that show God as a God of gods, or lower divine beings. When ancient writers thought of “the heavens,” or of the “council of gods” in God’s throne room, or “the mountain of the Lord,” they had images in mind that came from what the prevailing culture believed to be true. Just as we might picture God in a boardroom and angels as corporate officers, Job saw God as a king over other kings, rulers, and powers.

Ancient writers saw the heavens as the floor of God’s dwelling place—the underside of a literal floor through which God could look down. We are not that different from them. Because we, with modern telescopes, can see farther into the heavens than ancients does not make us more intelligent or less dependent on metaphor to understand God’s vastness. 

We have found the heavens to be larger than the ancients guessed. Does that mean that the heavens are less of a footstool for our God? No. It means both God’s footstool and God himself are more expansive than we knew.

If we have discovered God’s footstool is bigger than we thought, we must recognize that the God whose feet rest upon it must be greater than even the wisest of wisdom literature could comprehend.

It is this God whom Job proclaims “will stand upon the earth” as his (and our) redeemer. Job, nor we, could have fully imagined the lengths Christ would go to in fulfilling his words.

Christ, who is higher and greater than anyone has imagined, would become less and lower than anyone would imagine to do for us what no one could imagine. 

As Job, may we never lose faith in our great redeemer, Christ, who stood upon the Earth.
He stoops down in humility to join us.
He lay down in suffering to die as one of us.
He rose up in victory to assure us.
He enters our lives to transform us.

May we be changed, shaped, and focused as a telescope toward the Heavens, striving to reflect and magnify his image.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Our help is in the Name of the Lord, the maker of heaven and earth. — Psalm 124.8

– From The Divine Hours: Prayers for Summertime by Phyllis Tickle.

Today’s Readings
Job 2 (Listen 2.11
John 2 (Listen 3:02)

Read more about Humbled by the Heavens :: A Guided Prayer
Extoll the undeniable, wordless speech of God through the wonder of his creation that we can see with our naked eyes, if we will but open them.

Read The Bible With Us
It’s never too late to join our Bible reading plan. Immerse in the Bible with us at a sustainable, two-year pace.
https://mailchi.mp/theparkforum/m-f-daily-email-devotional