AP

Job 29:2-4   “How I long for the months gone by, for the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone on my head and by his light I walked through darkness!  Oh, for the days when I was in my prime, when God’s intimate friendship blessed my house, …”

There are some important things for us to learn from these musings of Job in the depths of his despair as he struggled with God’s perplexing Providence.  Firstly, by God’s including this in his revealed Word, he is giving us permission to accept the fact that there will be times when we really struggle with his Providence in our lives and often enigmatic circumstances.  We can feel very nostalgic about ‘better days’ when we were more conscious of his nearness to us and we were more confident of what he was doing in our lives and where he was leading us.  Yes, such recollection does make us feel more lonely and abandoned in tougher times, but Job’s experience encourages us to ‘hang in there’ and not give up.  Secondly, we need to read this chapter remembering what Job had said to his ‘comforters’ in response to Zophar’s unwarranted criticism, only six chapters back: ““But if I go to the east, he is not there; if I go to the west, I do not find him.  When he is at work in the north, I do not see him; when he turns to the south, I catch no glimpse of him. But he knows the way that I take; when he has tested me, I will come forth as gold” (23:8-10).  Yes, let us learn, with Job, in times of seeming despair, to rest in the sure and certain knowledge that our all-knowing and all-powerful God is there for us even, and especially, when we don’t ‘feel’ his presence.  Let us learn to sing enthusiastically with Mark Altrogge: “Shall I take from your hand your blessings, yet not welcome any pain?  Shall I thank you for days of sunshine, yet grumble in days of rain?  Shall I love you in times of plenty, then leave you in days of drought?  Shall I trust when I reap a harvest, but when winter winds blow then doubt?  Oh, let your will be done in me, in your love, I will abide; Oh, I long for nothing else as long as you are glorified.  Are you good only when I prosper, and true only when I’m filled?  Are you King only when I’m carefree, and God only when I’m well?  You are good when I’m poor and needy, you are true when I’m parched and dry; you still reign in the deepest valley, you’re still God in the darkest night.  Oh, let your will be done in me, in your love, I will abide; Oh, I long for nothing else as long as you are glorified.  So quiet my restless heart, quiet my restless heart; quiet my restless heart in you.  Oh, let your will be done in me, in your love, I will abide;  Oh, I long for nothing else as long as you are glorified.”

– Bruce Christian