This morning I was having a hard time typing out my thoughts. I had many ideas that were flooding my mind but I couldn’t seem to organize them. I asked the Lord to help inspire and guide me in what He wanted me to write for today.
After praying, I opened my bible to do my daily reading and I came across a devotional that I would like to share. The devotional made me think back to a conversation I had yesterday with my husband.
Like many of you today, we’ve been going through some difficult times with the covid 19 shut down and with family members who have not been feeling well. As we discussed our present struggle with one another, we realized what we needed to do to keep our focus on God in order to overcome these feelings. We decided every morning for the next couple of weeks to start our day off saying, “God is in control today.”
These five words would remind us how powerful, faithful and good God is, and there isn’t any situation that could get past Him without His permission.
Saying those words is a statement of faith, that the God of the universe has us in the palm of His hand and will bring us through our difficulties just like He has so many times in the past.
When I read the devotion this morning I felt thankful for my struggles. At the present time I am not suffering pain like Job and his wife were many years ago. Thankfully, I do not know anyone personally who has ever struggled in their life, to that extent.
The devotional is based on something Job’s wife says after they lost all their children, possessions, and after Job became ill.
The scripture is found in Job 2:9 which says;
His wife said to him, “Are you still holding on to your integrity? Curse God and die!”
The title of the devotional is;
Quit!
“SHE WAS AT HER WIT’S END.
Emotionally depleted from her grievous losses, Job’s wife had
nothing left to give to her husband. She’d wept so much in such a short time that she was sure she’d cried her last tear. Life seemed hopeless and, worse yet, she felt like God did not seem to care.
Everything she’d cherished was now nothing but a memory, and even the memories were starting to blur. One day, she had the frightening experience of suddenly not being able to picture her loved ones’ faces in her mind-her sons and daughters, their spouses. What did they look like? Could she remember clearly? Under the stress of her situation, she suffered untold emotional and psychological distress, digressing into symptoms of physical pain. She wasn’t eating. She wasn’t sleeping.
So, perhaps it’s not that surprising that the day she saw her husband covered in boils and scraping himself with a shard of pottery, she just lost it. Job’s wife fell to pieces emotionally and spiritually.
Her tirade may have been a long time in coming-it’s unclear from the details in the story. Maybe she had resented Job’s piety and devotion to God for a while. On the other hand, maybe she had actually been on the same level spiritually as her husband before her tragic loss and was simply responding under stress in exactly the way some of us might in a similar situation. Only in her instance, her breakdown was recorded for posterity.
We know Job was a righteous man-but, the truth is, we don’t know if his wife ever got back on track with God. We can’t say with certainty if she ever returned to faith in him (if she’d ever had faith at all). What we do know about her story is that life hurts sometimes. And if we all really spoke our mind during the times when it hurts us the most, we might sound more like her than we care to admit”
I appreciate that God chose Job and his wife’s story to be recorded in His word for us to learn from. In 42 chapters God shows us the struggle, pain, joy and the blessings of humanity.
This devotional helps us to imagine some of the feelings Job’s wife must have been going through, as she dealt with such heavy blows life had thrown her way. Her harsh response is an example of one of the ways we process grief.
One of the many things I’ve learned from this book is that we all process our feelings in different ways. We see Job’s response in chapter one after they suffer the loss of their children and possessions is very different than the response of his wife’s. It says in verse 20-22;
At this, Job got up and tore his robe and shaved his head. Then he fell to the ground in worship and said:
“Naked I came from my
my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart.
The Lord gave and the
Lord has taken
away;
may the name of the
Lord be praised.”
verse 22; In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrong-doing.
In chapter 2 when his wife came to him and told him to curse God and die! His reply to her was “You are talking like a foolish woman. Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble.”
I admire how Job held on to the Lord, even after he was stricken with boils and in such distress.
Throughout the book, Job’s emotions weren’t always so positive. At one point he told his three friends he wished he had never been born. However, all through his emotional struggle, there was one perspective he never lost sight of, God was always in control of his situation. He knew God had allowed such a terrible trial to take place in his life .
Just like Job our struggles are very real know matter how big or small the testing of our faith is. We all find ourselves going through these same emotions, anger, sadness, hurt, disappointment, and on we could go. These are all normal feelings, do not apologize for feeling them. What we can do, is recognize they are temporary and cling to the only one who can give us the strength to get over them.
Like Job, let us realize we are not alone. There is a Mighty God on our side. He sees us and knows exactly what we are feeling and how hard our struggle really is.
I encourage you to read the book of Job. It is filled with a mixture of emotions but also filled with hope in God. At the end of the book, God reveals himself in a powerful way to Job and brings healing to his body and restores two times the possessions he had lost.
I pray we would come to the realization that nothing takes God by surprise. There is NEVER a time when He says, how could I have missed that. He NEVER makes a mistake, and He is ALWAYS in control.
Let’s take heart in knowing these things about our God and respond like Job. We may not tear our clothes and shave our head but we can give him a sacrifice of our heart and worship Him.
