Truth Gets Real

The time to read Job is not when you are well, and all seems good in life. The time to read Job is when you are in a deep trial and loss in life.

Last night, as I read, I asked the Almighty to help me understand I John 1-5. I am stumped to some things in there. This morning I had a deep need to read Job instead, a book I have not read in quite some time, or just the ending.  I have read the first 10 chapters.   His friends came and sat with him, said nothing, to comfort him, which is what they needed to keep on doing and say little. They had messages and opinions, but they knew the temperament of Job, and they knew that he was upright in all his ways and wise.  When they spoke, the Bible translations want to belittle them and say that they were not helping, because Job was anguished by their words and became worse each time they spoke. YET, there is purpose in all they said and did. I am hearing and seeing the faith of Job, who is struggling and wrestling with Yahweh in his innocent anguish; he admits they are telling some truth but he knows he does not fit into it and will not give in to it, but he cannot figure out just why he is not giving in and why he does not fit in to the common mold of what his friends say–what he knows most fall into.  He is in pain, angry,  humiliated, brought down, removed from normal life as it was, and feeling tortured.  He is asking for revealing; this revealing is coming forth by a cause which Job will never know .   His friends are doing what Job had done with them so many times before.  The tables are being turned.  But, Job was a good, righteous man, not perfect, but not deserving of anything he is going through.  Job is a fault in the bible to us, right in the middle, to show us that life is not all cut and stacked with answers to everything.

I will continue to read Job this week.  I believe I will see truth in it I never saw before, only because I am in the middle of a physical and spiritual battle of my own.  I believe I have something still to see in order to fully heal from this AG and other allergy weeds that have developed in my healthy body and rocked my world.  I am anguished by the constant foods and products I cannot use or eat or even be around.  I am puzzled by the healing I thought I had, and now feel I never really had, or have I lost it somehow. I have lived a healthy lifestyle, and yet I find myself with a body that shows deterioration that does not fit into the “healthy” lifestyle results I had in mind.

OH, about John, I have not been back to John yet, but maybe I needed to wrestle with it also for a while; this is not a bad thing but what we are meant to do with the Word.

Rejoice in affliction, and allow revealing. It is real. It does prick the deepest part of the soul.