One Step Back

The chapter (3rd of Job) starts off with two little words: "After this..." Two tiny, almost insignificant words, but they hold a world of meaning inside themselves. Before them, all Job's family and wealth had been lost, and his health was broken; his God had seemingly abandoned him, and his friends came to him silent with mingled grief and respect. And so had passed a week of silence. A week of sitting in cold ash; a week of mourning so deep there were no words. Then Job spoke; and he broke the silence with a curse. A curse upon the day of his birth, and not only that, but even the day of his conception. He wished vehemently that not even God would remember it, but rather that it be forgotten and the day itself obliterated. He even went as far as to call upon those who regularly uttered curses to rouse up Leviathan, a fearsome sea dragon, to curse the day of his birth. But then the question arises...why does he wish all that? I and my commentaries believe that Job felt that the pain surpassed all the joy of his life, and if God would allow all that, why had He even created Job in the first place. Just to ruin him? So many times I have similar thoughts-they may come in disguise, but they are there. Job may not have blamed God for his calamity, but he wondered why it was allowed to happen. But we cannot see, and most often we are not allowed to look into the record book of God's plans; we may not understand the why's of our pains and tragedies, but God still has a plan for them all, and while we may only see the pain, He sees the beauty and perfection being wrought underneath our skin--in the depths of our souls. The most beautiful jewels, though, are formed when you are in the furnace and you still cry thanks and worship to God as King; when we remember His joys and blessings of past days, and realize that more are still to come. So as these hands tremble as I think about the future, and my soul moans as I think upon the past, even in all this, I shall remember as he did that truly, "the Lord gives, and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord!"