Job 30

Job is starting to get desperate. He knows his friends are wrong about his condition, but he is growing increasingly frustrated and miserable that God won’t talk to him. He feels abandoned: "I cry out to you, God, but you do not answer; I stand up, but you merely look at me." (vs 20)

Job did what we so often do—misinterpret God’s silence as indifference or neglect. Job assumed that God was displeased with him for some reason, although he couldn’t figure out why. In reality, God was highly pleased with Job, but Job couldn’t have imagined that to be the case. By this time, he was convinced that God was out to get him: "You snatch me up and drive me before the wind; you toss me about in the storm. I know you will bring me down to death, to the place appointed for all the living." (vs 22-23)

Job’s suffering had totally skewed his perspective and blinded him to reality. Here, he candidly states that he is waiting for death, the death he believes will come from God’s hand. The reality was that Job had decades of life ahead of him—happy years full of wealth, health, and abundant blessing. A peek ahead at Job 42 will reveal that Job had ten more children and lived to see his great-great-grandchildren.

Job was expecting death, while all the time, God was awaiting the right time to heap abundant life on His friend. As Charles Spurgeon put it, "A life of usefulness, and happiness, and honor lay before him; and yet he had set up his own tombstone, and reckoned himself a dead man."

I had to think about the disciples and how it was the same for them. After Jesus had been crucified, they were huddled together on the first day of the week with the doors locked for fear of the Jews (Jn 20:19). They thought it was all over. All their hopes had been dashed, and they thought there was nothing more to live for. What they couldn’t see was that what they thought was an ending—the death of Jesus—was really just a beginning. They didn’t account for the unexpected.

Photo © shutterstock.com/Evlakhov Valeriy

Job soon found out that his Heavenly Friend specialized in the unexpected. In the end, he received all the things he didn’t expect and none of the things he did. How about you? What are you expecting? Are you looking at your life’s situation today and thinking that things will never change? Are you miserable, wondering why God isn’t helping you out?

Another valuable lesson we can learn from Job is the lesson that God specializes in the unexpected. Just when we think things will never change, God can completely turn them around. Just when we think things could never get better, out of the blue, God rains down His blessings. Things are never so black that the Light of the World can’t penetrate the darkness.

No matter how it looks, don’t give up. God specializes in the unexpected.