Job 42:1-6
Job on His Sufferings
1 Then Job replied to the Lord:
2 “I know that you can do all things;
no purpose of yours can be thwarted.
3 You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’
Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know.
4 “You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak;
I will question you,
and you shall answer me.’
5 My ears had heard of you
but now my eyes have seen you.
6 Therefore I despise myself
and repent in dust and ashes.”
When Job spoke to God, he never knew what had caused him all his pains and sufferings...Job said this to our LORD, after he felt the LORD's Presence and listened to His questions, “I know that You can do all things; no purpose of Yours can be thwarted...You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures My plans without knowledge?’...Surely I spoke of things I did not understand, things too wonderful for me to know...“You said, ‘Listen now, and I will speak; I will question you, and you shall answer Me.’...My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You...Therefore I despise myself and repent in dust and ashes.”...
Job suffered and suffered greatly...But after Job spoke to the LORD, he was almost apologetic...And in the end Job never knew why he had suffered...He just found God and trusted that He knew what He was doing -and Job felt better after knowing that and hearing it from his Father...He realized he did not understand many things in this world, including his suffering in life...
And it seems the world suffers a lot...I have read that over half of Americans suffer from a chronic and recurring issue...Many suffer and we do not like suffering...And we often wonder in our sufferings, why me?...Our personal suffering gets our complete attention, unless something else takes our mind away from it...Is there maybe something else to suffering in some cases?...We try to avoid and distract ourselves and do many things to keep our minds off of our suffering...And what makes this distraction and avoidance interesting is that we are only on earth a short while...We are trying to use aversion and distraction in such a way that it can take away from life and the reality of life...And this may be odd, the avoiding of life's realities -to live a life of distraction...
So suffering seems to be part and parcel to living...Can we live without suffering?...Isn’t suffering a part of the human condition, since after the time we fell from grace in the garden of Eden?...
The Son of God suffered...This should tell us something...I mean, if God has His Own Son suffer, how can we avoid it?...Jesus from the night of His arrest and through the time of His crucifixion on the cross suffered both mentally and physically...Jesus gives us some insight on suffering and how it can make us anxious and make us feel bad, yet can we at the same time better understand suffering and how it influences our own thoughts and behavior...
Jesus died for our sins, so His suffering saved mankind from its own sins...Jesus trusted God in His sufferings...Job did not know why He suffered, yet he did suffer...Nothing he or his friends did, helped his suffering...But Job endured and trusted in God...Somehow the suffering we and our sins caused Jesus were in their own way good...Our sins, my sins caused Jesus to suffer on the cross...And we easily see that in and around His sufferings are goodness, righteousness, forgiveness, and LOVE…Why is it that we look at His suffering in one way, while we look at our suffering in a completely different way?...And we are the very ones, who caused Him to suffer...