8 February 2015 - job skills

Praise the Lord, who heals the brokenhearted.

We all feel like Job at times. We all find life to be a drudgery at times. We all occasionally face nights that drag on filled with restlessness. We all have hopeless days. There are times when the way back to happiness seems hard to find.

The LORD understands our suffering. His knowledge is exhaustive. It is comprehensive. Not even the slightest momentary affliction of ours escapes his notice. Every single thing which Job goes through the LORD knows through and through.

He tells the number of the stars;
he calls each by name.

We read and know that the LORD is great and mighty in power. So why does Job suffer? Why do we? Why must we wait for the LORD to come and heal our broken hearts?

Perhaps he is trying to reveal something to us. Perhaps he is trying to show us, not the power that immediately alleviates the pain, but something so real, radical, true, and good that it's value cannot be diminished by our suffering. Suffering can change us in bad ways if we let it. It can make us more self-centered. It can make us more the center of our own worlds. Even God is just one more treatment option. This brokenness, perhaps, is what he wants to address in us. Yet his solution is not to ignore us in our suffering. He does indeed heal the brokenhearted though not always in the way we want and not always when we want. Neither is his solution to hit us with a dose of divine painkiller. His solution is like that of Paul.

To the weak I became weak, to win over the weak.
I have become all things to all, to save at least some.

His solution is first to be with us in our suffering. His solution is to show us that the reality of who he is, Emmanuel, God with us. He wants us to see that this reality is greater than any suffering we can ever face. It is for this purpose that Jesus comes. He does not come to stay in deserted places while we suffer. He comes to us. He suffers with us. In this way he enables and empowers us to put God first even in our pain. It is hard to understand and our egos have a hard time letting go of the idea that we should be healed right now. But here he is with us, suffering too. If this is our God then surely we can love him even now. Especially now.

He meets us in such a personal and imtimate way. He grasps us by the hand and tells us to rise from our suffering. So let us go to his door. Let us draw as near as possible to the one who embraces us entirely. He shares our condition. He shares our pain. He is in the form of God but empties himself to be with us (cf. Phi. 2:6). And it is in this union only that we share his healing. So let us gather at his door with our various diseases and demons. We wonder why we are not already healed. But here at this door something more valuable than that healing begins to happen in our hearts. We begin to understand who he is.

Great is our Lord and mighty in power;
to his wisdom there is no limit.
The LORD sustains the lowly;
the wicked he casts to the ground.

We think we know him. But suffering hits and suddenly we are running our own show again and God is on the peripheries. But Jesus meets us this morning so that we may say with Job:

By hearsay I had heard of you,
but now my eye has seen you.
Therefore I disown what I have said,
and repent in dust and ashes.

Does that sound like a difficult thing to say? It is in a way. But it is wonderful that we come to a place where we no longer need to accuse the LORD of not healing us. We come to a place of new and more profound trust in him.

Praise the LORD, for he is good;
sing praise to our God, for he is gracious;
it is fitting to praise him.