Job 10

Here is the passage from today’s chapter that I want to focus on in this blog: "Why then did you bring me out of the womb? I wish I had died before any eye saw me. If only I had never come into being, or had been carried straight from the womb to the grave! Are not my few days almost over? Turn away from me so I can have a moment’s joy before I go to the place of no return, to the land of gloom and utter darkness, to the land of deepest night, of utter darkness and disorder, where even the light is like darkness." (vs 18-22)

Have you noticed something interesting about Job? He never asks God to reverse the circumstances that have caused his suffering. He doesn’t ask to have his children resurrected. He doesn’t ask to have his wealth restored. He doesn’t even ask to be healed from his illness! The only thing he asks is why. That’s all he wants to know.

Job is in a very precarious emotional position. He is in the throes of such despair—not because what has happened to him is so awful (though it is), but because he can see no sense in his suffering. His friends apparently see sense in his suffering; they are trying to convince him that his secret sin is to blame. But Job knows that’s not true. This makes it all the more frustrating for him. He might buy the argument that suffering comes because God punishes the wicked, but he knows in his heart that he’s not wicked.

As readers of the story, we see sense in Job’s suffering. We know exactly why it has happened. The curtain has been pulled back for us, and we have seen a glimpse of the unfolding drama between God and Satan—good and evil—that has caught Job up in the crossfire. Perhaps it is because we have seen "the rest of the story" that we assume Job must also have known something about what was happening in the background. But Job knows nothing. He can see no sense in his suffering.

In that regard, Job is not so different from the rest of us. For we can see sense in Job’s suffering, but we still have a very difficult time applying his story to our story. We can see sense in his suffering, but we still can’t see sense in our own. If we did, we might react very differently in times of calamity and crisis.

We still ask the very same question Job asked—why. But the story of Job is in the Bible precisely because God wants us to know "the rest of the story" as we deal with our own suffering. We don’t have to experience suffering as Job did. Because of Job, we can experience suffering from the perspective of the bigger picture. We can face the despair of Job chapter 3 and onward with the full understanding of Job chapters 1 and 2. We don’t have to go through it blind, wondering why. We can know exactly where suffering comes from and why.

Job’s story is the story of every person who has ever suffered, because all suffering originated at the same point—with Satan and sin. But God doesn’t want us to wallow in despair, without hope. He is eager to make sense of our suffering. He wants to help us understand it, and He wants to help us stand up under it.

Suffering isn’t senseless. I mean, that may have been Satan’s original intention. As an evil being, he delights in causing suffering "just because." But as suffering passes through God, He is able to bring sense and purpose out of it. He is able to transform it so that it ultimately becomes a blessing and not a curse. I don’t know how He does it, but with God, there is no senseless suffering. He can take all those ashes and make beauty. He can take all that pain and make joy.