Pain

Sooner or later, everyone needs a safe place, a protected place—cover from a blasting storm. When the sleet of illness pelts your life, when the downpour of grief drenches your heart, when the winds of anxiety threaten to knock you down, you need a secret place, a hiding place to escape from those things threatening to knock the props from your life. You need the shelter of the Most High!

The pain we endure in life hurts. Sometimes, our journey takes us through times of devastation and discouragement. The loss of a job, illness, relationship breakups, an unrealized dream, and death are just some of the adversities that can bring about “sufferings of this present time.”

Contentment. Where does it come from? There is no one better to ask than the apostle Paul. He was familiar with life’s extremes with challenging circumstances.

Jesus understands. He gets what it’s like to be misunderstood. He dealt with being mistreated. Jesus understands the pain of rejection, even having his closest friends abandon him in his time of need. Jesus experienced what it feels like to lose a loved one, a dad, a friend. Jesus understands physical pain. He knows what it means to cry…and cry out to God.

In our passage today, David, the man after God’s own heart, felt like he was caught in deep waters up to his neck. His feet were trying to locate a rock—a foothold—on the bottom of the stream, but he searched in vain and felt like he was sinking “in deep mire.”

There are many circumstances and challenges in our lives that we don’t understand. From our perspective and from our pain, they simply do not make sense. Death comes suddenly and unexpectedly. Illness invades a healthy body, and we watch it waste away. An accident results in chronic pain.

Job survived. He endured heartache, heartbreak, physical pain, and mostly bad counsel from his so-called friends. In today’s passage, Job even prays for them! And God blessed Job by giving him twice as much as he had before. God blessed the latter part of his life more than the first.

For the next few days, we are going to follow the journey of a great man who walked with God and held evil at bay. He was blessed with ten children and much wealth. He not only took care of himself, but his “regular custom” was to make sure his children were purified by the sacrifice of a burnt offering. Job was strolling along singing Curly’s song from the musical, Oklahoma! —Oh, what a beautiful mornin’! Oh, what a beautiful day! Everything was going his way until…the bottom fell out of his life. There was a time when a person heard the name “Job” and thought “blessing”; today the name is tantamount to suffering.

Our issue is not with people. Sure, life is lived in the realm of humanity. In that realm, words are shared, and events are experienced. People will inflict pain, and most of the struggles usually have a person’s name attached. But…our real battles, the deep issues of our spiritual skirmishes, are not “against flesh and blood.” Here’s how Paul says it.