Daily Lesson for August 23, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Job chapter 1 verses 6 through 12:

6 One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them. 7The Lord said to Satan, ‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’8The Lord said to Satan, ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’9Then Satan* answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing?10Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.’12The Lord said to Satan, ‘Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!’ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord.

We look at the book of Job and see a deeply religious and also human question, asked since the dawn of consciousness: “Why is there suffering in this world?” And indeed, we get some sense of the reason for Job’s suffering in this prologue to the book, where Satan and God set about a “divine wager” over the likelihood of Job’s faithfulness under extreme duress and loss. The scene may in some ways feel distasteful, as the writer’s style is rather perfunctory and gives the sense that God just casually engages in this sort of betting on human life.

But we should not let style keep us from wrestling with the questions Job has to teach us and the lessons it has to offer. At its heart, this Prologue to the book forces us to see that faithfulness without hardship is meaningless. For what does it mean to be faithful to and believe and trust in God in only times of plenty and not times of want?

We as Christians do not believe God just stands in the heavens looking down, betting on who will believe in Him in times of disease or famine or earthquake. We do not believe in a distant God. We believe in the God who came down to be with His people in their suffering in the form of Jesus, who suffered with them, and who remained faithful even unto death.

Job’s question is Jesus’ question, and it is also our question. Not so much, “Why is there suffering?”  For we can never really answer such a thing. But rather what will we do with suffering? Who will we become out of it? Will we be the same in sickness as in health, in poverty as in riches?