Today's passage is Job 3.
Job curses the day he was born, asks why he didn't die on that day and why people have to live when they long for death. He concludes by saying that what he dreaded has happened.
There have certainly been days in my life when I wished for a cessation of struggle and pointless effort and longed for what I imagined is the peace of death.
The problem, of course, is that death doesn't necessarily bring peace at all. It may if we call upon Jesus with sincere faith. But if we don't, then it will bring a worse torment that will never cease.
Even though Job's mind knows this, that knowledge is no defense against the devastating pain and agony of his circumstances.
There is no defense against his physical pain, his emotional trauma and his spiritual emptiness except God.
But Job doesn't call on God. He curses life and bemoans his fate. At this moment Job is lost.
Well I know this because I've been there. One moment I thought I was doing okay and the next moment I had nothing except the skin I wore.
Job describes the feeling well: "I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest but only turmoil."
Job confesses something I never did in my hard times when he says: "What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me." Job is living the moment he had already imagined.
I never imagined the misery I found myself in when my first wife died and revelation upon shameful revelation poured down on me in addition to the grief of her death.
I never imagined the heartache of the rejection of my lover.
I never imagined I would be jobless and living at the YMCA.
I never imagined any of my pain and suffering. But Job says he imagnined his.
If Job imagined it, then he should have been ready.
But he wasn't ready at all.
Was it because he didn't imagine God with him and only imagined the disastert that had befallen him?
I think Job's experience and mine point out the serious limitations of imagination for something truly important in life, like extreme loss.
Imagination can help me in mentally rehearse a speech or a taekwondo move or a dance step or something else basically physical, like composing the figures on the Sistine Chapel or operating on someone's leg. But I don't think it prepares me for mental, emotional and spiritual disaster.
Disaster is disaster and every loss is unique.
There is no preparation for it.
There is only the experience of it and reflection upon it and, with God's grace, an application from it.
Reading the Bible daily and reflecting on my life through the lens of the Bible helps me see myself more clearly and be grateful for God's grace.
Without seeing my reflection in the Bible by the light of the cross, I would be as lost as Job is today.
I pray that any future disasters in my life will see me with God's grace not with curses and denials.
Lord, I pray for your grace in the day to come. Give me your love for the children I will teach, help me affirm them and lift them up. Stop me from testing them too hard and making them despair. Protect me from thinking my imagination has any power to prepare me for anything worthwhile. Hold me in your hands, Jesus, and let me depend on you only.
