God of the good days and the bad days

Yesterday, we saw how Job lost all his animals and all his children and yet still managed not to blame God and to give him praise –

“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.”  Job 1:21

Today the angels, accompanied by Satan, are back before the Lord again in Job 2:1-6.

The Lord: Where have you come from?

Satan: From roaming throughout the earth, going here and there and everywhere.

The Lord: Have you seen my servant Job? He’s good, isn’t he? A great example of how to get it right. How to live right. There’s no one on earth like him. Even you couldn’t find any fault with him. He rejects all that is evil. He follows me. Even when you tried to turn him against me for no reason by taking all that he had, he still stood by me and maintained his integrity.

Satan: Yeah well, it’s easy for him, isn’t it? I wasn’t allowed to touch him, was I? A man’s own life is what matters most to him. If you attack his flesh and bones, he’ll turn against you for sure.

The Lord: OK, go for it. You do it then. You can do whatever you want to him, but don’t kill him.

And so –

Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and afflicted Job with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes.  Job 2:7-8

Ouch. We’ve all experienced pain and discomfort so bad that we would do anything to escape it. Nagging toothache, dragging period pain, acute ear ache, excruciating back pain, a blinding headache, intolerable eczema…Whatever your own particular brand of torture, it feels like it will never end. It feels like there is no escape. We would do anything, say anything, try anything…Job is desperate. He’s covered in sores. He’s scraping at the sores with a piece of broken pottery. And his wife cannot believe he is standing by his God and not cursing him. She takes him for a fool, whereas she is the fool.

“You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?”  Job 2:10

What a line! A great one for when others ask us why we believe when God appears to be sending us all kinds of trouble. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? I have a friend who refused to keep coming to church a few years ago because she looked around and saw many people suffering all sorts of tragedies and was scared. Scared something would happen to her if she kept coming. Because as God’s followers, we are not exempt. We have to be prepared, as in any relationship, to take the rough with the smooth. That is life. That is part of being human. The rich tapestry of life. Which does not feel rich or like a tapestry when you are sat in the ashes, scratching at your sores with a piece of broken pottery. At that point, I guess it is a sheer act of will to say ‘Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?’.

Job has three friends – Eliphaz the Temanite, Bildad the Shuhite and Zophar the Naamathite. They are famed as being Job’s comforters. Here, they do OK. More than OK. When they hear about their friend’s troubles –

• they act
• they leave the comfort of their homes
• they go to him
• they coordinate with each other
• they work as a team
• they cry with him
• they grieve with him
• they feel his pain
• they sit with him, right where he is, for a whole week
• they do not say a word

We could learn an awful lot from this, it seems to me. We’ve seen plenty of examples of how people get it wrong. No doubt we have got it wrong on occasions. Maybe we don’t know what to do, so we do nothing. Maybe we’re scared of getting too involved, so we keep our distance. Maybe we want to solve it – we can’t stop offering suggestions and advice and explanations.

Sometimes though, just being there is what is needed. No suggestions. No advice. No explanations. Just be there. Don’t talk. Don’t fuss. Don’t try to fix the unfixable.

Don’t offer lame platitudes.

Don’t say God is teaching them a lesson.

Don’t tell your friend it’s time to move on.

Don’t begin to try to explain it away as some super spiritual exercise.

Just be there.

And be quiet.

God is the God of it all.

We don’t understand how and why. We probably never will.

But God is there in the suffering as much as in the good times. Maybe even more so.

Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble?

Life is the whole package.

Discover God in it all.

Be a good friend in it all.