Job, we’re informed, was a righteous man, graced by God with all method of blessing. But when Satan struck a wager with God that he might make Job curse God, a rash of calamities befalls Job. He loses every thing, together with all those that had been pricey to him and all his property.
The ebook of Job is a meditation on tragedy, struggling, and the finitude of the human situation. It forces the reader to confront the truth that life brings with it intervals of loss and destruction, even a vacuum of which means. In Job’s case, after struggling tragedies, his buddies sit with him for seven days, not talking—solely being current to Job as he teeters getting ready to despair. Having misplaced every thing, he cries out to the Lord: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (1:21) We are informed that even in his grief he doesn’t sin or curse God’s identify.
After the interval of silence, Job’s buddy Eliphaz asks him, “Is not your fear of God your confidence, and the integrity of your ways your hope?” (4:6). He poses this query, I feel, as a result of he acknowledges that even with the lack of every thing and everybody pricey to him, Job just isn’t with out hope, as a result of he’s nonetheless a beloved youngster of God. Further, Eliphaz observes {that a} lifetime of constancy to God and of practiced discernment of how one can stay earlier than God, represents a supply of hope. For even within the darkest moments, he appears to aver, what lies earlier than an individual is all the time a thriller and thus, for the devoted individual, a chance for God to guide him towards newness of life.
I learn the story of Job as a sort of meditation on what St. Ignatius described as a interval of desolation, a time of distance from God, unhappiness, and listlessness in prayer. One of Ignatius’s counsels stays with me: he advises us to not make any main life adjustments whereas in such a interval. Eliphaz’s counsel says as a lot: belief your religion; belief your way of life; belief that God can deliver forth the great even if you are within the midst of the unhealthy. It isn’t any small matter that he and the opposite two buddies of Job merely sit with him in silence for per week, recognizing the enormity of Job’s loss. Their presence is the start of a balm to Job’s soul. And they acknowledge, I feel, that desolation seldom gives simple or fast options. I think about them holding shut the phrases of Psalm 27:14: “Wait for the LORD; / be strong, and let your heart take courage.”
Image: Job and His Friends by Ilya Repin. Public area by way of Wikimedia Commons.