Job 3:1 starts “After this …”. The ‘this’ was 7 days and nights of just sitting. Sitting in his funk, in his sores, with his friends there, just sitting.
Thinking.
Wondering.
Sitting.
He waits a week to start his lament. I doubt it’d taken me that long.
Then, in Job 3:1-10, he doesn’t simply lament all that has happened to him in recent days, no, so great is his sorrow that he laments that he was even born. All the good, all the joy, all the blessings in his life added together, and any that may someday come, are not enough to offset the pain in his heart right now. He curses the day that brought him into being and that ultimately lead to where he is now.
In Job 3:11-20 he wonders why, why was I brought into existence for this? Wouldn’t it have been better to skip straight to death. In death evil is silenced and the weary and oppressed are at rest. There both the small and great have the same fate, a fate preferable to that which has now.
Why bother, he asks in Job 3:21-26, to give one in misery the light of day, when all he longs for is for his days to be done? Of what use is the day?
I can imagine that many in Colorado feel this today, as any victim of any tragedy would. The pain is so raw, so real, so great that there seems that there can be no escape. Daylight or night, it comes, no matter where they turn it is there, they want to run but know that it will still envelope them everywhere. While I can imagine such despair, I cannot imagine what it’s like to live under it.
You can feel the depth of Job’s pain here, and it makes me mindful to never trivialize or dismiss the pain of one who’s suffering.
I thought, from your title, that you needed a new job. LOL
I can’t imagine the suffering Job went through though at times I’ve felt like I’ve had difficult times. When it’s been awhile since I’ve felt a form of suffering I get leery because I think it’s coming again. It’s reassuring that after God blessed Jobs life, after the test, he didn’t have him go through it again.
I just read the Job epilogue and it’s also interesting that Jobs new daughters were named but not the sons. Huh.