Wednesday, January 6, 2010

42 days with Job. Day 6 and 7.

"Do I have any power to help myself, now that success has been driven from me?"

ain't that sound familiar.

Just to get a brief mental picture of Job's physical state:

verse 5 of ch. 7- "My body is clothed with worms and scabs, my skin is broken and festering."

....festering!!

"What is man that you make so much of him,
that you give him so much attention,
that you examine him every morning and test him every moment?"

"Remember, O God, that my life is but a breath;
my eyes will never see happiness again."

So where to begin. First of all, Job....I think I speak for everyone and NO ONE at the same time when I say "I FEEL YOUR PAIN". Of course I mean everyone, because we all think we go through hell in life, whether it be physically, mentally, emotionally or spiritually and the words he expresses don't seem that far off from how we often feel during those times of frustration or tribulation, but I also say NO ONE since what Job experienced, I'm sure, makes anyone else's pain look like something on Sesame street. FESTERING worms lived in his cracked skin...and not only that but one verse describes how he couldn't even sleep or lie down because nightmares and haunting visions would scare the crap out of him so much so that he preferred strangling and death! I mean, not to mention the guy already lost all his kids and every animal he owned (which in the present day would be like houses, cars, land, stock, money, etc) the guy was a world class wreck! I was wondering about the verse where he says: "what is man that you make so much of him...." and was thinking how it was strange that it was not God that was inflicting all of this on Job, but rather Satan was doing all the work, while God merely ALLOWED it to happen (meaning he took his protection off...which he also had given freely out of love)...and Job kind of automatically thinks that it's God who is doing all of this to him. Reminds me of when people say things like :"well God has a reason" when something bad happens to someone...but who knows, maybe God isn't doing anything, and maybe it's time you got down on your knees and repented and asked for God's protection over you once more. I mean that may not always be the case, because God does discipline his "sons" (see Proverbs) in order to purge them of their bad habits, but I think there is a fine distinction between being disciplined and just being down right destroyed.

I'm not making fun of Job at all, but when I read the verse about him being just a breath and never seeing happiness again (see above) I instantly thought of myself in times of distress where days later I think : "geez, I was such a little diva!" There have been times where I felt like I was too fat or too ugly or too dumb to ever be happy again, and I let deceptive thoughts seep into my mind and kept opening more vacancy for those thoughts to ....well...fester there and multiply to the point where I lost myself in them and began to hate myself. Thank God I have such great friends and family that I was able to always get slapped or socked in the face as a reminder of how I let stupidity get too far, because in retrospect I am beautiful, and although it wouldn't hurt to lose 10-20 lbs, my body is active and healthy, and shooot, I'm going to grad school next year as a physiology specialist! I wouldn't exactly call that dumb, and I'm not saying this to brag or anything, because in all honesty I slacked off throughout college while all my other friends and cousins were finishing up their undergrads in 3 years I took a year off here and a semester off there, which landed me way behind in the graduating department. However, I don't regret anything I've done, but the main point is that when I took a look back at myself and my life....I found out, and hopefully you'll agree with me (esp if you know me haha) but if you don't that's fine and quite honestly I don't really much care either way, but I found that I am pretty enough to love someone and love myself, I love running and playing sports, and I love reading and researching and going to school. Okay, now I feel like I've gone off tangent, so let me try and steer us back to relevant territory with Job. So here Job is living in the "now" of his situation where everything has and is continuing to fall apart both mentally and physically, and he already blurts out that his life is useless and he'll never be happy again. I'm not arguing with the guy, I'm sure if I were him I'd feel the same way...BUT, like in my previously explained example that took us a little off track, I thought that that was it. I was always going to be me (ugly and fat and dumb) and that there would be nothing I could do about it. However, that was then, and here I am today. beautiful (if i so dare say haha), smart, and fit. And so just like that, Job is human like the rest of us selfish greedy little creatures. He despairs and he gets depressed...but the story doesn't end at chapter 7. That's for sure.

Before I end let me briefly...err..that word may be ambiguous, talk about how Job felt about his friends who spoke out. He describes them as dry rivers, basically he's saying that they are like rivers that look good and refreshing for traveler's in the desert who reach them only be to disappointed when they finally arrive at them and they are all dried up. I feel like he's saying that they are not really truly sympathizing with his pain, and that they are just all talk and no real help. They sort of place this blame on Job and tell him to seek God, but Job is just out of his mind going crazy because he has yet to curse God, and yet his friends are saying that he should appeal to God. They're also saying that he should just accept his sin and know that God is a just God (this was seen in chapters 4-5) Now i'm guessing that Job is kind of like "you people are crazy, just what in the world do you think I'm doing now if not keeping my reverence for God....if you want to be useful then start picking out my worms!!" It's like kicking a person when they are already down. Now, from my perspective it doesn't seem like Job's friend (the one who spoke in ch. 4-5) has any sort of evil intention or bad character, so I feel bad for the him, but I also can understand Job's anger given his situation and all. So is there a right and wrong person here? We'll see...

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