I love how God ties everything together. We started reading the book of Job. It is the textbook on suffering. Suffering was the subject of more than one source today.

March 22, 2018, “1-Min Motivation”

“If you read the Bible like a magic rulebook you will never fully understand the extent to which it is meant to speak to your situation and guide your life. God is not scared to walk right up in the details of your situation…you think He doesn’t know about your loneliness, your tears, your heartbreak, your questions? You think He’s intimidated by your skepticism? You think your broken heart can chase him away?…But if you open yourself, even with your face downcast…”  “God is in the Details,” Steven Furtick

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“…We do right and get knocked down. We do the best we are capable of doing, and just as we are reaching out to receive our reward we are hit from the blind side and sent reeling….Job says boldly what some of us are too timid to say….He shouts out to God what a lot of us mutter behind our sleeves. He refuses to accept the role of a defeated victim….Job does not curse God, as his wife suggests he should do, getting rid of the problem by getting rid of God. But neither does Job explain suffering. He does not instruct us in how to live so that we can avoid suffering. Suffering is a mystery, and Job comes to respect the mystery.” The Message Introduction to Job

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Job 2:7, 8, “Satan left God and struck Job with terrible sores. Job was ulcers and scabs from head to foot. They itched and oozed so badly that he took a piece of broken pottery to scrape himself, then went and sat on a trash heap, among the ashes.” The Message

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“Ashes. Symbolic of mourning (see 42:16; Esther 4:3; cf. Jonah 3:6, which speaks of sitting in dust).” New International Version Study Bible Notes

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“Job rejects wisdom’s view that the world is orderly, that all is arranged according to just principles. His tragedy is not just. Righteousness does not always result in good fortune. Bad things do happen to good people. His friends argument – that Job must have sinned to deserve such suffering – only indicates the poverty of this particular aspect of wisdom teaching. Job also rejects the idea that wisdom is to be sought from tradition….Nevertheless, Job does not give up his search for enlightenment and never completely gives up his hope for justice. Nor does he surrender his faith in knowledge by experience.” Chronological Study Bible Introduction to Job

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“The most difficult ingredient of suffering is often time….Without the grace of God, the heart is sure to sink into dismal despair….As Joseph did, we should be more careful to focus on learning all the lessons in the school of sorrow than to focus anxious eyes toward the time of our deliverance….Then we will know we could never have served in our place of higher service without having been taught the very things we learned during our ordeal. God is in the process of educating us for future service and greater blessings….” “Streams in the Desert,” March 22

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