Passage Read: Job 1-4
Meditation Verses: 4:3-6
Thought
Job instructed many, no doubt he met many people who were suffering for different reasons. He was a compassionate man and a man of resources, so that when he found someone in need he surely did what he could to help. He doubtless met many people who had suffered loss, and he did what he could to comfort them. He also saw many who were suffering because of their own sin and foolishness. He had counseled many, but did he also counsel himself? He knew he could not curse the Lord, that the Lord was God and he was man, but did he know how to process this tragedy? He vented his grief, wishing he'd never been born, wishing even now he would die, but he would not take his own life. He felt hopeless and overwhelmed by the breadth of his tragedy, but he needed to maintain his trust in the Lord, by sheer force of will.
Application
It can be easier to comfort those around us in their time of trouble and tragedy than to know how to comfort ourselves in similar trials. We're not in the middle of all their confusion and grief, and everything is going well for us. Can we really understand the trouble that others endure? To give the best and most meaningful counsel requires understanding as best I can the trial that others are facing, putting myself in their place as fully as possible, so that I can give counsel and comfort from within the trouble rather than from without. As if I'm going through the trial myself, so that I'm also prepared to face and endure such a trial myself. My righteousness and obedience aren't a shield that will protect me from trouble. Rather, they can make me more of a target to Satan, to try to bring down and through me to cause many more to stumble. Being determined to hold on to things, even health and comfort give Satan the leverage he's looking for and sets me up to fail. "The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord." The things on this side of eternity are not mine to keep, but everything and everyone who follows me into God's eternal kingdom, these are mine forever!