Job 23:1 Then Job spoke again: 2 “My complaint today is still a bitter one, and I try hard not to groan aloud.
3 If only I knew where to find God, I would go to his court.
4 I would lay out my case and present my arguments.
5 Then I would listen to his reply and understand what he says to me.
6 Would he use his great power to argue with me? No, he would give me a fair hearing.
7 Honest people can reason with him, so I would be forever acquitted by my judge.
8 I go east, but he is not there. I go west, but I cannot find him.
9 I do not see him in the north, for he is hidden. I look to the south, but he is concealed.
10 “But he knows where I am going. And when he tests me, I will come out as pure as gold.
11 For I have stayed on God’s paths; I have followed his ways and not turned aside.
12 I have not departed from his commands, but have treasured his words more than daily food.
13 But once he has made his decision, who can change his mind? Whatever he wants to do, he does.
14 So he will do to me whatever he has planned. He controls my destiny.
15 No wonder I am so terrified in his presence. When I think of it, terror grips me.
16 God has made me sick at heart; the Almighty has terrified me.
17 Darkness is all around me; thick, impenetrable darkness is everywhere.
Many times, people speak of waiting on the Lord as if it is something delightful and airy and easily done. But what happens when we have been patient and nothing seems to be happening? We pray, and yet we feel as if our prayers are bouncing off the ceiling. Writers in an earlier era have spoken about feeling as if the heavens were brass, as if there were an impenetrable barrier between us and God. Saint John of the Cross wrote about the “dark night of the soul.” Darkness is all around us; thick impenetrable darkness dampens our souls, blighting our enthusiasm.
If we ignore the reality of God remaining silent, we deny ourselves the justification of our struggles to remain patient in the face of adversity. When archers are preparing to shoot arrows, they bend their bows, forcing the bowstrings to stretch. Were we able to interview the bowstrings, they would certainly complain. “I have no idea why the archer can’t allow me to remain slack or at least a little bit relaxed. Why must I be stressed nearly to my breaking point where I might snap?” But archers know more than the bowstrings do and they continue to pull the strings out to the exact point at which the arrows will have maximum impact. Only then will the archers release the tension on the strings, causing the arrow to fly to its target.
Very few if any of us know how much tension we can take when God is stretching us. I remember one year in which I was the only doctor, seeing patients and operating several times a week. There were staff upheavals that forced an outside team to come; their conclusion was that the staff complaints were groundless. While all this was going on, my father’s health deteriorated to the point that he had to enter assisted living. And then my beloved stepmother underwent a life-threatening emergency heart operation that left her with problems of her own. My husband’s mother died when he was seventeen, and his step mother died when he was forty-three. My mother died when I was thirty-two. Now my stepmother was the only mother we had left between the two of us, and we were terrified that we might lose her as well.
Meanwhile, my husband’s beloved sister-in-law was fighting a rare and vicious form of cancer complicated by sepsis. We returned to America just in time to help settle my father in a new assisted living complex, only to have to rush to Buffalo, New York, where my sister-in-law was dying. We supported my brother-in-law as he navigated the complexities of selecting a gravesite and planning a funeral, a process complicated by my brother-in-law suffering an anxiety attack that sent him to the emergency room. My husband accompanied his brother to the ER while my niece and I took over planning the funeral. And when we left in early September, we left knowing that we were seeing my father for the last time before we would meet him in heaven. When my father died in mid-December, we did not return to America for the funeral because that would have left our hospital without a doctor at Christmastime, a time when doctors leave most small district hospitals to return to their home villages for several weeks. Generally, our hospital was one of the few still offering emergency operations at Christmas, and we didn’t want to fail our patients.
Writing this summary, I realize I have no idea how we survived all this, and yet, God was there and He did strengthen us. We came out as pure gold, not by our own efforts but by the grace of God.
Much of the Book of Job makes for very depressing reading; however, by the end, Job has been vindicated, his critics have been silenced, and God has restored far more than Job ever had to begin with.
Perhaps you feel as if you are in a time of deep darkness. You are waiting on God, but God seems to have hidden Himself. Do not give up! God is still there, and at the right time, He will deliver you. We learn far more from our times of darkness than we do while walking in the light.
May God strengthen and encourage you, so that at the end you will come out as fine gold.
PRAYER: Father God, thank You for loving us and caring for us. Lord, help us to trust You even when we feel lost in the darkness. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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