The story of Job is familiar. God and Satan, who is one of the angels in God’s court, put Job to the test to see if an upright and innocent man will remain faithful if God takes from him all the evidence of God’s goodness — all his riches and children. This Old Testament book explores what happens when bad things happen to good people.
Job loses his oxen, sheep, camels, servants, and children. His experience takes him outside the norm of people’s expectations. How can anyone suffer such losses without reason? His friends come to talk and search out his blame. Job holds to the truth of his own experience; he is blameless. The story fractures the equation: prosperity equals God’s blessing; misery equals God’s punishment for sin.
In Sunday’s first reading, Job vividly describes his suffering. God does not speak to Job in his affliction and anguish until chapter 38, though Job presses to know why these things have happened to him. God’s response is a question, “Where were you when I laid the foundation of the earth?”
Job must live in the mystery of life and the mystery of God’s love, which is more than a simple system of reward and punishment. Jesus continues this story. In him, God comes among us, suffers with us, and creates a future with us.
Life is empty.
Do not human beings have
a hard service on earth?
Are not their days
like those of a laborer?
Like a slave who longs
for the shadow and laborers
who look for their wages,
so am I allotted months
of emptiness; nights of misery
are apportioned to me.
When I lie down, I say,
“When shall I arise?”
But the night is long, and I am full of tossing until dawn.
My days are swifter
than a weaver’s shuttle
and come to their end
without hope.
Remember that my life
is like a breath;
my eye will never again see good.
Job 7.1-4,6-7
- How do Job’s words fit your life?
- When have events in your life taken you beyond what friends can help you understand and into mystery you must live?
- How have you experienced God or Jesus with you in times of suffering and loss?