42 days with Job. Day 2.

"Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes."

So after having destroyed his family and possessions, Satan comes before God again and tells him that if God were to allow him to harm Job's flesh then Job would surely curse God. You know those annoying friends who can never admit they are wrong, even after they have been proven wrong they go out of their way to find some other excuse that might justify their mistake, and it's so irritating because they act as if what they thought (that was proven wrong) earlier was SOMEONE ELSE'S mistake....as if the world SHIFTED on them and it was totally unexpected...because you know, how could they have ever been wrong (spoken thick with sarcasm)? Well, this is just that. Satan is the annoying guy who makes this big claim that Job only loves God because God blesses him with "stuff" (ie: big family, thousands of livestock, etc), so God is like "alright, take it all away, because I know Job's and My relationship goes deeper than that." So Satan kills off his children and servants and takes all his wealth, yet Job remains pure and praises God knowing full well that everything was God's to begin with anyway. Then Satan acts as if the world suddenly shifted and comes before God saying that if God were to harm Job's flesh, basically inflict excruciating pain on Job's body, then Job would definitely curse God. Now look closely, and notice how Satan never said or admitted that he was wrong about the first accusation, he just moves on to another one and acts like the first one went wrong due to a misunderstanding. OWN UP TO YOUR MISTAKES. Satan is that annoying friend who plays the ignorant fool who won't admit it when he's wrong, but God doesn't point it out or say anything (cuz God is so chill and cool like that) he just let's Satan do what he wants on Job again (except take his life) cuz once again God is confident in the bond He has with Job...that their love for each other goes beyond thick and thin, whether good or bad times. Satan thinks that if he can cause enough personal pain on Job that Job would get all angry and go insane and curse God...this is actually somewhat logical thinking, but in a worldly perspective. The reason I say this is because of the amount of pain that was inflicted on Job. This was not "cuts and bruises" type deal. This was sores erupting from the soles of his feet to the top of Job's head, so painful that Job took a piece of broken pottery and just started scraping himself to try and numb the horrific pain with the shock of inflicting another pain manually on himself. It's kind of like this, imagine getting a paper cut. It hurts and it's a nasty little slice, especially if you get it between your fingers so that every time you abduct them (spread your fingers) it opens the cut up and sometimes rips the edges wider. However imagine getting a piece of paper and giving yourself a paper cut between your fingers. It's more frightening because you know what's coming, but it's still going be the same level of pain, but because you're self inflicting it on yourself the shock value of doing it intensifies that feeling of pain. So Job has these sores all over his body, he probably can't even stand up since they are on the bottom of his feet, so he grabs a jagged piece of broken pottery (he probably cried out in agony and grabbed the first thing in sight, a potted plant, and tossed it on the ground...men tend to turn to violence in times of trouble, and Job is still a man) and he sees this opportunity to perhaps lessen the pain on his body by adding a 'shock' pain of self inflicted gashes. He scraped away at his skin, over the sores, which I imagine are itchy beyond annoyance, and just sits on the ground scraping and scraping.

Then his wife, his poor wife who loves him, and who already bore the tragic news of all her children dying, sees this and, sadly, being the emotional retard of a woman gets all unstable and tells him to just go insane with her and drop his integrity to curse God and die. Now, I don't know if this rings a bell with anyone else, but it sure reminds me of a certain other female who gave into deception...ahem...Eve. Eve, however, wasn't afflicted by a sorrow of hearing her children die and then seeing her husband scraping himself with a broken piece of pottery, she just let vanity take over when Satan deceived her by saying that if she ate the apple then her eyes would be open. And what better way to see yourself with your eyes open? She couldn't settle for her naked (and probably perfectly hot) husband or with her own (probably perfectly hot) body so she eats the apple and ends up covering what was meant to be beautiful and shameless. Job's wife is probably bawling and screaming at Job, and most definitely getting angry at God, and she tells Job that he should just end his misery, but before he does that he should curse God because it's God's fault that Job is in pain...and her mindset is "How can God be so cruel as to inflict such enormous pain on Job, how DARE He!" So she reverts to the exact sort of mentality Satan is trying to exploit in Job, that mankind is really selfish and stupid and will play the role of master (giving God the role of servant) when it so conveniences them. However, Job stays strong and firm in his integrity and calls his wife's thinking like that of a "foolish woman", rightly so, since it is indeed the most foolish thing to think that man could ever be God and God ever be our servant and he says: "Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?" and it goes on to say "In all this, Job did not sin in what he said."

Job remained sane, even when his wife who wasn't even getting sores was yelling and screaming and crying for Job to curse God and die. A clear example of right and wrong thinking. From a calm and collected perspective we know that it is moot point to curse God in a situation such as Job's because what good would that do, to wave an angry fist at God, to perhaps make God feel bad? How many times do we revert to this sort of thinking when bad stuff happens to us or even to people we love. We get all emotional and somehow get deceived into thinking that by waving an angry fist at God we will feel better or maybe make God feel worse, but then again that would be making God out to be our servant since we would be trying to make him do something we wanted him to do. And plus, we all know that blaming God (or other people for that matter) never does a darn thing but arouse more anger and emotional instability. What's done is done, and pin pointing the problem on someone else won't make the pain go away, especially if you pin point the wrong guy. Yet Job never says anything to curse God or sin, he just sits there scraping himself, knowing full well that God is God and that he can bring good (in Job's case it was a lot of good since God blessed Job with tons of sons and 3 beautiful daughters as well as billions of dollars--it says Job was the greatest man among all the people), so that if trouble came, even if it was from God (which it wasn't, since Satan was the one who was trying to prove, once again, that Job's love for God was shallow) Job would not blame God since God is God and Job the servant. Meaning no matter what the master did to the servant, the servant was to obey and keep serving, since that is the role of master and servant. I'm not talking about the master-servant relationship of those back in the civil war days when a white man beat his black servant and it was considered wrong, because it was. White men were never meant to play the role of master to any other race, they just assumed that position and it eventually became rightly abolished, though what took so long shows the stupidity and arrogance of mankind, however I'm talking about the actual definition of a master and the definition of a servant. A master is like the owner. A servant is someone who serves the master at whatever cost. So Job, despite his double intensified pain of sores and gashes, somehow manages to stay logical, and even tries to explain to his wife how her thinking has gone awry.

Job's friends also come along after they hear the news of what happened to his children and then to his body, and when they reach Job he is no longer recognizable from all the blood and pus oozing from every inch of his body as he sits there in the ground scraping himself like a crazy person. And then we find out what kind of friend's Job has...