The Journey 1-1-15 Morning People! The Book of Job 2:9-13 (Message) “Friends & Silence” Take a read. . . His wife said, “Still holding on to your precious integrity, are you? Curse God and be done with it!” He told her, “You’re talking like an empty-headed fool. We take the good days from God—why not also the bad days?” Not once through all this did Job sin. He said nothing against God. Three of Job’s friends heard of all the trouble that had fallen on him. Each traveled from his own country—Eliphaz from Teman, Bildad from Shuhah, Zophar from Naamath—and went together to keep him company and comfort him. When they first caught sight of him, they couldn’t believe what they saw—they hardly recognized him! They cried out in lament, ripped their robes, and dumped dirt on their heads as a sign of their grief. Then they sat with him on the ground. Seven days and nights they sat there without saying a word. They could see how rotten he felt, how deeply he was suffering. Reflections • In my own experience of traveling down the road of grief and suffering, I don’t want a lot of visitors. It just seems they use up so much energy and I have none. I am not sure that people coming by and saying nothing, like Job’s friends, would have been an improvement, but we will soon see that once these friends start opening their mouths, they never stop putting their feet in them, so in their case silence was perhaps better, right? Often times, both silence and speech can be focused more on the ones who are speaking or being silent rather than on the person they are supposed to be comforting. • Often empathy finds physical expression. Job’s friends did that. I like to think that brought him comfort. Notice his friends were from east of Canaan, like Job. Teman was in Edom and likely Uz; we don’t know for sure where Shauah or Naamah were. Most likely, like Job they were not Jewish but believers. They tear their coats apart, as Job had. They throw dirt into the air in such a way that it falls back on their heads, most likely a sign of grief. And they sit with Job, saying nothing. Not a bad strategy. • Questions: Why did they need to arrange to meet together before they came to see Job? Was each of them afraid to face him alone? Were they afraid to “catch” whatever affliction he had brought on himself? Did they need to reassure one another that it was okay? Did lifting up their voices and weeping count as “shaking” for him, or are they protesting on their own behalf? It is a bit frightening to witness someone else’s suffering, in my humble opinion. It raises questions about whether the same thing may happen to us. So why did they say nothing to him? Is that the action of a comforter? In Judaism, it’s traditional for people closely related to a person who had died to “sit shivah,” sit at home for seven (sheva) days of mourning and prayer. Again, for me, I would be glad for people to be quiet rather than chatter. • Okay, I delayed in mentioning Mrs. Job. Was she broken by the suffering of the man she loves? Can she no longer stand to watch his suffering? Is her own suffering just too much to bear? Has Job not “sat” by her and recognized her grief? Or does she anticipate the conviction that Job’s “friends” will express later on: does she assume he must be GUILTY of some wrongdoing in order to have deserved the calamities that have come upon him? Them? ( I think sometimes we forget Mrs. Job’s grief) PERSONAL - I know for me that it has been a long, slow understanding to enter into the grief, suffering and pain of Janie’s Lupus journey. The calamities have come upon Mrs. Job too. She lost her children and the possessions that are the family’s livelihood. Whatever is going on for her, it appears she brings another temptation to Job. How about Job’s response? Mrs. Job is behaving as if she were stupid, he says. She is talking as if she were the kind of woman who had no religious, spiritual, and moral insight, or as if she were an ordinary woman and not the woman that someone like Job would have married. She seems to have started thinking about him or about herself instead of continuing to be someone who respects God and submits to God. (you get that, right? Submission is a theme in Job. Submission does not come natural in my opinion) I’ll ease up, cause in circumstances like the ones that have come to her, it’s easy to cease to be the kind of person we should. PARENTHETICAL thought or question: Do Western people (those of us who have “had.”) fret or have trouble with “the problem of suffering” more than people who are used to life’s being tough? Is that too obvious of a question? I believe the possibility of suffering scares us a bit. We are use to being in control. People who have had a life of hardship might find it a little easier to rejoice in God when particular tough experiences come to them. What do you think? For Job it appears, good sense, assumes or means respecting and submitting to God. Stupidity means declining to do so. Good sense means recognizing the kind of sovereignty of God that the story assumes. God lies behind the good things and the bad things that happen to us. Job has done no evil, but evil has come to him. That’s not fair. But he does not say so. (Yet.) Love you gals and guys, pb REPEAT of New Year’s “Spiritual Byte” ‘Makeovers” One morning on the Today Show, they took a somewhat ordinary-looking woman, sent her off to another room and, a little later, on the same two-hour show, brought her back with a whole new look, hairdo, makeup, clothes, and accessories. The December 20, 2004, issue of Time magazine had an article describing the television show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. It told the story of Alive Harris of South Central Los Angeles. She still remembers the day the good people from ABC volunteered to demolish her house. In 2003, a flood had left the community activist and her family, who had no insurance, living in one bedroom. Worst of all, the waters had ruined a stash of Christmas toys Harris had collected for poor children. Harris said, “I figured no one was going to come to Watts and help us. No one had ever done that.” But Extreme Makeover: Home Edition found her. Its bullhorn-wielding host, Ty Pennington, shipped Harris and her family off for a week’s vacation in Carlsbad, California, while over one hundred workers and neighbors tore her home down to the foundation and built a new, bigger one. They replaced the Christmas toys and donated appliances, mattresses, and landscaping to her flood-stricken neighbors. They even threw in a basketball court for the neighborhood kids. Now that’s an extreme makeover. Okay, what does all this have to do with New Years? Simply this, all of these extreme makeovers have something in common: an outsider comes in with a one-two-three program. First, that outsider sees the possibilities you couldn’t see. Second, that outsider does what you couldn’t possibly do. Third, that outsider pays for what you could not afford to pay. So, fellow sojourners in faith, as you face this 2015 remember that this amazing God we love is in the makeover business. He’s in the business of transforming your life and mine. He has a similar three-step program. One, He sees possibilities in you and me that we’re not apt to see in ourselves. Two, He is able to do for you and me what we simply cannot do for ourselves. Three, He’s able to pay the price for what He does. We can’t afford the price so He paid it for us. But God’s makeover is slightly different in one area. The reality show makeover is an external job. God’s is an internal job. He makes you and me a new person from the inside out. As you face a new year, please, let Him do His work. He’s really really good at it.
Posted on: Thu, 01 Jan 2015 12:11:28 +0000
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