Remember Job's Wife

Tuesday afternoon the cynical advice of Job’s wife made perfect sense to me.

Remember her?

She’s the one who, when life turned sour, told her husband to curse God and die.

Maybe this wretched cold influenced my thinking. Maybe it’s just a swing in my normal morbid mind-set. Maybe that package in the mail upset me inordinately.

Whatever.

But this was one of those times when I’m ready to renounce God as a fraud and sulk in a corner nursing my wounds.

Every few months I get in one of these moods. The heavens turn to brass. Prayer seems a waste of time and changes nothing. The Scriptures read like gobbledygook and myth. God is gone, if He were ever there in the first place. I hurt and Christ offers neither remedy nor hope.

How’s that for a glowing Christian testimony?

Am I the only Christian to go through periods like this?

At such times, Job’s wife makes perfect sense.

Curse God and die. Why bother trying. Why keep pissing against the wind. What’s the use. Why keep trying in the light of so much failure?

Nothing I do matters. My efforts are useless. I’ll just fail again. The game’s not worth the candle.

Somebody up there’s got it in for me.

All of the above says how I honestly feel this morning.

Days of gray drizzle contribute to my funk. Sleep depravation drains me. Frustration about my inability to do the house repairs myself adds to my guilt. This cold saps my energy. Flat book sales discourage me. Money may not stretch, but checks sure will bounce.

And there’s nothing good on tv!

But the kicker, the last straw, came when the mailman delivered that package yesterday. It contained 500+ proof pages of a book I worked on while on hiatus from my Fire Department History. Yes, between chapters in the fire history, I formatted my own diary thinking to publish it. And the printer just mailed me the proofs.

The front cover looks distorted. The back cover text blurred. Headers and footers mutilated the title and copyright pages in the front of the book. And in the back of the book, the index didn’t index.

All this I saw without actually reading a single page!

And I’d worked so hard on this thing.

I really believed I had it perfect.

I treated this manuscript exactly as I’d done others.

What went wrong this time?

Despair gripped me.

That package broke my spirit.

That’s when I remembered the advice of Job’s wife.

Pooor John.

Maybe he needs a hug — or a kick in the ass.

But, after wallowing in self-pity for an enjoyable length of time while I mulled over the words of Job’s wife, I remembered the words of Satan in the Book of Job (which scholars say is the first book of the Bible to be written) and I found some comfort.

Yes, oddly enough, Satan’s observation comforted me.

Satan questioned, “Does Job fear God for naught”?

Satan taunted God charging that only because things went well for Job at first, that was the only reason Job had faith in God.

Satan observed that it’s easy to worship God when life is bright and sunny. Like in that Rev. Fun cartoon:

So, God allowed Satan to wipe Job out. Everything from his kids to his cattle, the evil one destroyed. Job’s property reduced to ashes. His proof pages messed up. His computer screen said, “Fatal Error”. His body wracked with murrains (I’m sure that’s the biblical name for this same kind of cold I have). Job’s friends belittled him and his wife said, “Why don’t you curse God and die”.

In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

In fact, out of all the mess, Job’s faith grew stronger even though he saw no answer to his troubles, no answers to his questions.

Yet while all this was hitting the fan, Job said, “I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth: and though, after my skin, worms destroy this body, yet in my flesh shall I see God”.

As to his afflictions, Job declared, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him”.

Now, I realize that my troubles add up to nothing compared to Job’s. I know that I’m undergoing a temporary funk, a funk that a good nap may well cure. I also know that this trough looks familiar; I’ve wallowed in this same ditch before — those are my scratch marks on the wall from last time I was down here.

I know that I’m a big cry baby moaning over troubles that don’t amount to much in the larger scheme of things — but I don’t live in the larger scheme of things, I live in my tiny circle and things hurt here at the moment. —

Why, I even cut the inside of my mouth on a sharp potato chip last night!

Job never did that.

So I feel I’ve earned the right to cry and bitch and moan.

But, while I do not have Job’s faith…

I do have his example.