42 days with Job. Day 1.

"Naked I came from my mother's womb,

and naked I will depart.

The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;

may the name of the Lord be praised."

Now that quote above, which comes from Job 1:21 may sound like a good poem or some hippie song lyric, but the story behind those words come from a heart of wisdom. They come from a man at the lowest point of his life, with nothing more to live for, who somehow still finds the will to live..but not just live...to live praising God. Talk about tough skin...or mentally ill. So what exactly happened to Job, and why did he say "Naked I came...and naked I will depart...the Lord be praised."

So this rich guy with a huge family of 7 sons, 3 daughters; think the brady bunch times 5 or the partridge family if you prefer, whichever family you found most "happy to be together most of the time" and wondered after watching an episode why your family was so distant or boring...Job's family was the ultimate party family. It says that each of his sons held feasts!..not just lunches or dinners, but FEASTS every week, where they also invited their 3 sisters (cuz you know they all love each other and love being all together) so that's about 20 people in one room MINIMUM (assuming they were all married WITHOUT kids and WITHOUT friends, which is not likely but for the sake of simplicity let's just say it was 20, when really it was probably more like 50 people) so they are having a ball, laughing, eating good food, talking about how funny their dad is for not liking feasts and for preferring to sit at home praying and reading the bible, but also grateful that God shows so much favor on him..then WHOOOOOOOOSH!!! A violent wind, like a hurricane comes and blows their house down, with them trapped inside, and they all get crushed and die. Some lucky servant manages to pull together enough adrenaline and lift the roof off his face and body and gets out with broken bones and an eye missing plus other injuries...and he goes and runs (or maybe hobbles cuz he lost a leg) to tell Job about what happened. Now just before this servant had come, 3 other servants had already hobbled on their one leg to tell Job that some gangsters had come and stole his sheep, oxen, donkeys, and camels and on top of that killed hundreds of his servants, but allowed one to live to tell Job. Animals back in the day were like cars, houses, food, and jobs today. So basically, before Job was told by the one-eyed, one-legged beat up servant that his children were all crushed by hurricane katrina, 3 other servants had come to tell him that his job went bankrupt, his house burned down, and all his cars were stolen and sold on the black market.

So Job sits on a bench and says: "naked I came....and naked I will depart, ...the Lord be praised"

When all of us are born, we come out of our mother's womb in our birthday suits. Then some nurse or doctor puts a hospital cloth over us and hands us to our mothers to be held and taken care of. We, as newborns know nothing, have nothing (like bank accounts, food, clothes, no nothing) we need our moms to hand breast feed us, to change our diapers...even GIVE us diapers lest we poop all over ourselves and lay in it. ew.) so we are, like Job says: "naked" initially until someone, most likely our mom or dad, comes along and GIVES us stuff for FREE like food and clothes and diapers. Free for us, not for them. why? because they like us, they really really like us...and we are darn lucky to be liked by them. So basically we are born with NOTHING, but then God GIVES us parents who then GIVE us food, diapers, clothes etc.. and that is what Job knows by wisdom. The simple truth that we don't own or have anything until someone GIVES it to us, so what right do we have to complain when what we have gets destroyed and the person that gave it to us doesn't compensate? If I give my friend a puppy and it gets an ear infection (like my poor linus has) and then it's legs grow too long or it's eyes go blind and then one day it dies, is it logical for my friend to get angry with me and expect that I get him or her another puppy? No. Heck no. I gave my friend a puppy out of the good generosity of my heart, not because I OWE that friend anything. The same with Job. God had blessed Job with a hearty family, lots of livestock and riches, but then Satan came along and destroyed all of that thinking that Job would be deceived into thinking it was God's fault..cuz he would be emotionally unstable, and people that are emotionally unstable do and think illogical things. But Job remained sane. He kept his head on straight, and knew that even though it was great when he had his 10 children and million dollars, those were all GIVEN to him by God, and therefore he had no right to be angry if they were taken away. That is some deep understanding.

If I suddenly woke up and got a call that my parents and brother had got into a car accident and were instantly all killed, that news alone would shake my world into devastation, depression, sadness, and just an overwhelming flood of desperate loss. Then to be followed by another call from a bank or lawyer saying that everything my family owned; houses, cars, etc, were to be confiscated by the bank on account of some sort of loan unpaid, leaving me with really nothing would shock me beyond what I can fathom right now. However, this is what Job experienced. He went from being the richest man with a huge family of 7 sons and 3 daughters, along with thousands of sheep and other animals to waking up one morning to the news that his children had been crushed in their own home and his livestock had been stolen by raiders..leaving him with just his own body and mind. Yet despite the tragedy given him, he remained sane and was able to discern that what he "had" was gone for reasons unknown to him, but nonetheless the Lord was His God and Job praised God. Just because something bad happened to him doesn't mean that God suddenly is to blame, because wouldn't that look more like God was not God and Job not the servant, but instead that the roles were switched? God is God, Job was the servant, so Job knew he had no right to complain or blame God for what had happened to his children and livestock. God, the master, had given Job these things out of the goodness of his heart, not because he OWED Job, the servant, anything.

Shoot. That's a tough pill to swallow. Let it just sink in, that you are being a big bratty baby when bad things happen and you curse God for it. You need to be smacked, and reminded of your idiocy that everything you have now was a gift from God, you came naked into the world and had nothing, but because God is so nice he gave you a family or friends or even an intellect, maybe even some arms and legs, sight, hearing, sense of touch or the ability to sing, let alone talk, you were GIVEN those things, and if they are taken away God is still God. He is still to be praised, and you are still naked.

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Introduction.

So I'm starting a blog session about Job and each day I will be reading one chapter from the book of Job as a way of going on the same journey he did. In case you don't know the story of Job, he was a man who was blameless before God, and God loved him. Satan comes to God and basically tells God that Job only serves God because God puts a hedge around Job and blesses him with food, wealth and a good family. In other words Satan is saying that Job only likes God because God gives him lots of expensive gifts. So God let's Satan take whatever he wants away from Job, to show satan that Job is not that shallow, but that Job and God love each other as a Creator loves his creation. However, Satan is not allowed to harm Job himself. So Satan does a bunch of horrible nasty things to Job...things like killing his children, having gangsters come and steal his stuff, etc, but Job doesn't waver in his love for God. So then Satan says some other stupid crap about how it's because Job is healthy that he loves God, basically saying that Job is a selfish S.O.B. who never really cared for his children and things anyway, but that if he were allowed to mess with Job's health (basically everything but death) then Job would surely curse God. So the story unfolds...and I hope whoever reads this will take this journey of understanding our relationship with God with me and learn a great deal about ourselves and about God.

-Jamie.