When God's Timing Hurts; Job 3-4, Proverbs 2

May the mumbling commence!

What assumptions do you and I make about the righteous and wicked in God’s sight?  Do we travel down the well worn path of assuming that righteous people will be rewarded and wicked people will be punished?  After all, Proverbs also says the very same thing:

For the upright will dwell in the land,

And the blameless will remain in it; 

But the wicked will be cut off from the earth,

And the unfaithful will be uprooted from it. (2:21-22)

Yes, God will give just desserts.  God does give just desserts.  What I reap, I will sow.

Even as I have seen,

Those who plow iniquity

And sow trouble reap the same. (Job 4:8)

These are the words of Eliphaz the Temanite.  Many of us would shout an “AMEN”.  In a perfect world, they are true.  But, my friends, we left the perfect world hand-in-hand with Adam and Eve. 

Think about it: How would these words sound to someone apparently good that is suffering?  Now, I know that I held up Eliphaz and the other two friends as positive examples of how to be present with someone who is suffering; BUT, when they open their mouths, too often they have hoof in mouth disease.  They cease to be positive examples.

How do we bring this wisdom into our fallen world?  How do we hold up the truth that God gives just desserts when we see bad things happen to good people and wicked people thriving?  Do we continue the assumption that just desserts of God will certainly happen in this life?

O, I would like to make that assumption.  If just desserts are not immediate, they don’t have the same appeal to me.  I would guess that it is the same with most of you.  But the raw data of this world rails against that assumption.  Relatively good people suffer greatly.  Relatively wicked people thrive and succeed.

And there is another question: How do we respond when it happens to us?  How do we respond when bad things happen to us in the midst of our attempts at being upright and blameless and faithful to our Lord? 

There are things worse than death.  Have you and I considered what it would feel like to lose everything that we hold dear – all our possessions, our reputation, and our children?  Then, pile on top of all this losing our health – and a spouse that tells us to curse God and die! 

That, my friends is dark and bleak.  Death might look attractive in that situation.  Scratch that.  Death would look quite appealing.  It helps us begin to understand the words of Job in chapter three:

"Why is light given to him who is in misery,

And life to the bitter of soul, 

Who long for death, but it does not come,

And search for it more than hidden treasures; 

Who rejoice exceedingly,

And are glad when they can find the grave? 

Why is light given to a man whose way is hidden,

And whom God has hedged in? (Verses 20-23)

Death is the greatest treasure.  Those are Job’s words on this pile of sorrow and grief.  Job recognized that God had once hedged him in with blessing – the words of Satan earlier in Job chapter one.  Now, God was hedging Job in misery.  And God would not allow Job to die. 

Help us, O Holy Spirit, grapple with our Lord whose sense of time and timing is much different than ours! 

Enough mumbling for now… 

Peace Out