Job 3 -- Some Effects of Grief

The style of grieving that Job exhibits is very foreign to us.  We don’t sit on ash heaps and we don’t often curse the day of our birth, as if in doing so God might go back in time to intervene and change our history.

Job’s friends arrived and sat with him at the garbage dump for seven days as he remained silent in his misery and grief.  I wonder if he was hoping that his silence might capture God’s attention so He would fix things?

When he did speak, it wasn’t to curse God, but to curse the day he was born.  “Job’s suffering was so great that he forgot the blessings that he and his family had enjoyed for so many years … But pain makes us forget the joys of the past; instead, we concentrate on the hopelessness of the future.”

“Job cursed two nights:  the night of his conception and the night of his birth.  Conception is a blessing that comes from God; so when we curse a blessing, we are questioning the goodness of God.”

“He closed his curse with four why questions that nobody but God could answer … There is nothing wrong with asking why, as long as we don’t get the idea that God owes us an answer.  Even our Lord asked, ‘Why hast Thou forsaken me?’  But if the Lord did tell us why things happen as they do, would that ease our pain or heal our broken hearts?  Does reading an X-ray take away the pain of a broken leg?  We live on promises, not explanations; so we shouldn’t spend too much time asking God why,” my commentary said.

Father, over the years, You’ve helped me so much to trust You and to stop asking “why”.  You’ve taught me to accept both the good and the bad and to say, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Your Brother In Christ,

Gary Ford