Confusion in Suffering

Job waffles throughout the book in his response to the suffering. In Job 9 he was eager for someone to mediate his issues with God. Now in chapter 10 he's ready to die again as he was in Job 3. This is the trouble with suffering, it births emotional swings of massive proportions. 

Take note of his recounting of the goodness of God in his life:
Job 10:8–12 (ESV) Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you have destroyed me altogether. 9 Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust? 10 Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese? 11 You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews. 12 You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit.

Job recalls that all he is and all he has is from God. Yet, inwardly, his heart is sure that God did all this to set him up for ultimate suffering in taking it all away. 

Job 10:13 (ESV) Yet these things you hid in your heart; I know that this was your purpose.

And I think we have here a picture of what we should actually do in suffering even when it looks wrong. We need to work it out in our heads. We need to walk through the emotions one at a time and let time bring us from one stage to another. They speak about the 5 stages of grief for this reason. 

Job is confused by suffering. That's what suffering will do to all of us. Here Job considers God was only out to get him from the beginning. At the end of this chapter, Job wants this version of the Lord he has imagined to go away...

Job 10:20–22 (ESV) Are not my days few? Then cease, and leave me alone, that I may find a little cheer 21 before I go—and I shall not return— to the land of darkness and deep shadow, 22 the land of gloom like thick darkness, like deep shadow without any order, where light is as thick darkness.”

Here's another confusion the suffering has produced in Job. For it was God who set the limits on his suffering from the hand of the devil. If God had stepped away, the devil would have surely killed him! 

The story invites us into the confusion of Job so that we won't be shocked by our own confusion in our suffering. Trouble brings doubt to faith, but we are again the beneficiaries of Job's story with a back-stage pass. 

Let us consider then, that while we do suffer, God is the only one who mitigates its ultimate impact. Your hope in suffering is not less of God but more of Him, which is exactly what Job will get in the end. 

Let us renew our confidence that He is with us always even when we are confused about how close He may actually be.

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