And Be There

 Today's "Thankful in all things" (pinned on my page) verse is Job 1:20-22

"Then Job stood up, tore his robe, and shaved his head. He fell to the ground and worshiped, saying:

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

In all this, Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing."

This is what Job proclaimed right after losing all the things he had spent his life working to achieve. The culmination of his life's ambition, goals, and even his future legacy, in the death of all his children. All that remained was his home, his unbelieving wife, and a handful of servants.

Job is one of my favorite books. I comprehend it best whenever reading it in the NLT or even the NiRV.

After losing all of that, then his health is attacked. He has to endure all this internal suffering, (because even whenever our faith is great, even whenever we view God as supreme and sovereign, when we endure difficulty, its hard and it hurts deeply) then he's subjected to physical suffering as well. And then what is his response when his wife tells him to "curse God and die":

“You talk like a foolish woman. Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?” So, in all this, Job said nothing wrong."

This statement has always brought to mind the words of Jesus in Matthew 5 during His Sermon on the Mount. 

"For he gives his sunlight to both the evil and the good, and he sends rain on the just and the unjust alike."

God is mostly benevolent towards us, regardless of our righteousness. We just tend to notice the lack more than we notice the abundance. And we always tend to see ourselves as the right/good/just/righteous while others are wrong/evil/unjust/unrighteous. When bad things happen to them, they're getting what they deserve. When it happens to us, we cry "It's not fair."

"Should we accept only good things from the hand of God and never anything bad?

Something else, I've never connected before is how this directly corresponds to Genesis 2 and the tree of the knowledge of good and bad. The exact same Hebrew words are used towb (טוֹב) and ra` (רַע). 

Adam and Eve's great sin was that they ate from the forbidden tree. This story is the most famous of all the Bible stories, yet the point is a bit obscure. What does it mean to "eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and bad"?

This tree is symbolic for the knowledge that belongs to God alone. He has placed a boundary, forbidding us from knowing all things, limiting our grasp, our perceivability of what is good and bad.
We "eat" from this tree whenever we take it upon ourselves to define and discern for ourselves what we deem as such. 

Another place this train of thought takes me is to Matthew 7 where Jesus speaks of answered prayer as gifts from a father calling us "evil" and the gifts "good". 

"So, if you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!"

 And I think this is the point made by the time we get to the end of the book of Job in the chapters where Elihu and God speak, reminding us how finite our understanding of the world, the universe, is.

“So, teach the rest of us what to say to God. We are too ignorant to make our own arguments." 37:19 NLT

As I continue to meditate on everything I remember from previous read-throughs of this book, something else I thought of for the first time today is how Job's initial response is framed from a humble and correct mindset. It's not until his friends start to project their perceptions of his apparent unrighteousness, does Job's convictions of God's profound just righteousness start to crack and crumble. He stops focusing on God's majesty and starts accessing life through a lens of "self" as he tries to defend his own character. And while he's not entirely wrong (God Himself called Job righteous), he tends to overinflate himself by elevating himself to a place of demanding God justify Himself to little old Job. 

How many times have I done the same thing? The assumption that lies behind my asking "why" is that I've already deemed it as "bad" and "unjust". Who am I to decide what is good and what is bad, from my view down here on earth? 

Where was I when God laid the foundations of this earth (38:4)?

I'm not God. But God does invite us to reason with Him. Isaiah 1:18 says, 

“Come now, let us reason together, says the LORD: 

The Hebrew word is yakach (יָכַח) and it means: to reprove, to correct, to argue, to decide, to judge. I love the way Bible Hub's Topical Lexicon defines it saying,

 "Strong’s Hebrew 3198 (יָכַח, yākhaḥ) expresses the idea of exposing what is wrong and establishing what is right."

So, whenever I come to God in sorrow, mournful prayer, what is the disposition of my heart? Is it accusatory, or is it me asking, "God help me see the good in this!" Is it me petitioning Him to "Remember my frame" as I remind myself too that "I am but dust"? (Ps 103:14)

Remember how I said earlier that God is mostly benevolent towards us? The story of Job shows us that even when we come to him, elevated, demanding an answer, first, like any good father, He disciplines us, bringing us to repentance by reminding us we don't have the right perspective. Then He is gracious.

Psalm 84:11 proclaims:

"For the LORD God is our sun and our shield. He gives us grace and glory. The LORD will withhold no good thing from those who do what is right."

One of my favorite old memory verses is Isaiah 57:15 

"For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite."

It helps me with perspective and reminds me that God is so many things: majestic, mighty, just, righteous and all those attributes that elevate Him so far above me. Yet, He is also, compassionate, merciful, forgiving, and gentle all attributes that bring Him ever so near.  

“Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked I will return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away. Blessed be the name of the LORD.”

Perspective helps me to see that God knitted me in my mother's womb. He created me and gave me my soul and spirit. And then He lovingly placed me in an environment knowing that from the moment I drew my first breathe, I would be lured to fixate my affections on anything and everything above Him. Little things, big things, all things. My thoughts are constantly thinking about my own satisfaction, forgetting that my soul's truest satisfaction is found in Him alone.

I've said Job is one of my favorite books. Psalm 73 is one of my favorite chapters. I remember the day I read the following verse and could truthfully say, "amen". 

"Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you."

I regrettably don't seem to say here. But in the fleeting moments whenever I am able to settle here, I find an unshakable peace. After all, I don't view Heaven so much a place, as I do a permanent realized proximity to the One whose name is Holy. And I am forever indebted to the One who made that proximity possible and I'm thankful for the moments of clarity that allow me moments of that realization. And those moments are most often found during times of letting go and of loss of whatever I was holding onto with a tighter grip than what I was clinging to Him with.

I don't think most of our desires are inherently wrong, I just think they're misordered. Matthew 22 Jesus rightly proclaims the greatest command is:

"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind."

Do I love God most? More than my possessions (Matthew 6:19-21)? More than my family (Luke 14:26)? More than my life (John 12:25)?

Heavenly Father, thank you for all the sorrow, pain, and loss that provided moments of clarity for me to assess where my sustenance and true satisfaction lie. Thank you for the countless ways you have and continue to provide for me, and all the different ways you orchestrate a good future in spite of all my flawed, misguided, wrong and sometimes rebellious choices. Thank you for the journey through the sun-scorched lands that cause me to depend on you. Thank you for abundance even when it feels like lack. Please continue to open my eyes and direct my focus onto You. Help me remember the perfect example you lived and the life you willingly gave up for my benefit and that you counted it as joy. Thank you for the times I have felt Your presence so near that I tasted briefly the fullness of that joy, enabling me to sincerely say in agreement with Asaph "Whom have I in heaven but You? And on earth I desire no one besides You." 

Thank you that my future rests secure in You, because I am wholly unable to secure it for myself. I love you and want to love you more. Thank you for You. In Jesus' name. Amen.

I'll leave you with a beautiful poem by Corrie Ten Boom that so articulately says with so much less what my heart gleaned from my time today:

My life is but a weaving
Between my God and me.
I cannot choose the colors
He weaveth steadily.
Oft’ times He weaveth sorrow;
And I in foolish pride
Forget He sees the upper
And I the underside.
Not ’til the loom is silent
And the shuttles cease to fly
Will God unroll the canvas
And reveal the reason why.
The dark threads are as needful
In the weaver’s skillful hand
As the threads of gold and silver
In the pattern He has planned
He knows, He loves, He cares;
Nothing this truth can dim.
He gives the very best to those
Who leave the choice to Him.

~Corrie ten Boom