Week of October 27

Suffering is unbearable if you aren’t certain that God is for you and with you” (Keller, Walking with God Through Pain and Suffering, 58). Job vents his frustration over the pain and suffering he is experiencing, his confusion about God’s place in all of it, and his anger at the meaningless words of his “comforters.” Sometimes we cannot see the forest for the trees when we suffer because our pain obscures something more significant and even well-meaning friends are poor park rangers through the timberland of grief. Enter hope! Hope clears a way to see God’s hand of help in our misery. Let’s learn today about the importance of hope when all seems hopeless.

A confession of hope lies beneath Job’s emotional outburst (HCBC). Job reaches out to the heavenly “Intercessor” in his great trial (cf. Romans 8:26-28; the Spirit intercedes). His suffering was teaching him things about God and His ways that he never understood before. Job expresses himself in a poetic cry that reverberates through the soul of every believer who suffers anguish. We may identify with Job, too, and glorify the Lord for His nearness in the storm!

Hope is our foothold.

Verse 1 flows from the previous chapter and continues the theme begun there (see 16:22). The verse is powerful in its simplicity—three, two-word lines. The style of writing helps us to see and feel Job’s predicament. He is “broken in spirit,” his days are “cut short,” and the graveyard will soon be his abode (17:1). Job may simply be out of breath from his pain, or he may refer to the fact that his spirit is broken (Handbook). It is quite possible for us to see a bit of both meanings in the simple expression. Suffering knocks the breath out of a person and can also break the spirit. His lamp is about to go out, so his days are coming to an end. We would say, “My life is almost over.” He then dives even deeper into his travail by crying out that the grave is ready for him, but hope gives us a foothold when we have one foot already in the grave!

To make matters worse, Job’s friends had hardly been the support he needed. Scripture tells us that there is a friend who is closer than a brother, but Job was not blessed with this fellow (see Proverbs 18:24)! His buddies mock rather than mourn with him (17:2). The verse is a difficult one to translate but the meaning is something like, “Everywhere there are people who laugh at me, and I watch as they cruelly attack me” (Handbook; see also Matthew 27:27-29, 39-44). The stage has been set for Job to indicate his “next step” in the face of such overwhelming sorrow. Just this morning, I stood on the hilltop at the Center and watched as the first rays of sunlight topped the horizon. In similar fashion, the earliest rays of hope had yet to appear to Job, but the promise of their arrival lay just beyond the horizon of Job’s circumstances. I have not endured this type of loss in my life, but I do know that there is One, our God, upon whom we may lean on during our own severe trials. Well, you may be thinking, “Thank you, Ashlock, for starting my day off on a downer!” Hold on for a minute or you will miss God’s whisper. Listen closely for Job’s deepest longing in his darkest night.

Job says, “Lay down a pledge for me with you; who is there who will put up security for me?” Do you hear it? Job has switched from complaint to plea, and he asks God to put up a pledge for him. He wants God to step in and provide the money to obtain his release from this prison of pain. He pleads, “Be my surety!” His friends think that he is guilty of some hidden sin, so Job calls out to God, his only hope, to prove that he is blameless. Job uses legal imagery of a court room when he reaches out to God and asks Him to take on the responsibility for His freedom. 

God offered freedom for all humanity when He broke open the grave and raised His Son as the guarantor of new life (cf. also John 11:23-25; “Your brother will rise again”; “I am the resurrection and the life”; Romans 5:8). Job knew in the depths of his being that God was there and cared for him. He did not understand his ordeal, or why he was required to pass through it, but he knew who did know and understand—God. Job trusted Him (cf. Job 42:1-6), and we may trust Him as well.

My family has been blessed with my mother’s walk of faith throughout our lifetimes. My sister and I have specifically benefited from her Christian example in the home, so we know a side of her that few have seen. I envy my older sister, who has been blessed with our mother for five-and-a-half years longer than I have enjoyed her! We both know that mom modeled the trio of virtues - faith, hope, and love - throughout all our years. But now she has moved from the city in which she lived for ninety-two plus years to take up a new residence in a place near where I live. Some days she voices deep sadness over her circumstances and asks me if I understand what it is like to walk in the dark forest of sorrow. I confess to her, despite all my years of theological training, that I have yet to set foot there. She does not scold me; instead, she knows that this pathway is one that God equips faith-walkers like her to travel.

We were recently seated at her assigned dining room table with many other residents in their places chattering with their friends. I know of some in that villa who are also traversing similar terrain. Mom whispered to me across the table that she felt all alone. She deeply misses her husband, our father, and oftentimes asks God to please take her home to heaven. In that moment, I sensed the whisper of the Holy Spirit, and I began to sing along her dark trail of hopelessness, “What a friend we have in Jesus / All our sins and griefs to bear / What a privilege to carry / Everything to God in prayer!” I had barely finished the first measure when she joined me in singing that hymn. Her eyes testified that her hope was still grounded in Jesus, despite her sorrows!

My sister years ago introduced me to Babbie Mason’s music. That Christian music artist sings, “When you can’t trace His hand . . . trust His heart.” My mother, sister, our spouses, all our family, and I have placed our hope in the trustworthy God that delivers us from hopelessness. We may trust God in our suffering and hope in Him when we cannot trace His hand (Psalm 23:4).

1. Sometimes the way is dark, so you must simply follow the hope that God has placed in your heart through the resurrection of Jesus. Sometimes God is silent, so you must simply walk by faith, with hope, and in response to God’s love (2 Corinthians 5:7; 1 Corinthians 13:13). What will be your next step today?

2. For Families: Parents need to help their children come to faith, THEN they need to model how to walk in faith, hope, and love when life’s trials come their way. Share age-appropriate testimonies of how God is helping you through family trials (i.e., four-year-olds cannot understand abstract theological concepts, so be concrete and tangible in your witness to hoping in God). Ponder this passage and consider how you will equip your children to walk through tough times when God appears to be distant. Here are two ideas.

Some of you enjoy camping. On your next family outing, attach verses of scripture that instill hope in hard times to various campsite items like tents and chairs and cook stoves (e.g., 1 Peter 2:1-3, when drinking milk at breakfast!). Then take your children (grandchildren, too!) on the trails and share scriptures that encourage faith and hope when the journey is wearying, and they begin to wonder where they are (God places signs in nature that guide you along the trail, and His word guides our steps in life; Psalm 119:1-3, 9-11, 105!). 

You may choose to do the same thing when teaching your children (grandchildren, too) to cook difficult dishes. Pause in the preparation process at specific times and share verses of Scripture about faith and hope even when we do not know if the final product will be tasty! Pray aloud throughout various times and upon completion of the cooking. 

May your paths be straight,
Larry C. Ashlock