Job CI

 The various ways in which God teaches us profound truths should come as no surprise, yet somehow, they still do. For those willing to humble themselves and learn, for those with a teachable spirit, even the most mundane of events in one’s life can have an impact and open our eyes to the undeniable reality that we have not arrived; we don’t know it all, and clinging to Him with all the strength afforded to us is the only means by which we can traverse this life and finish well.

I have what some might construe as a messy closet. I’ve never been a fashionista, so most of my wardrobe consists of t-shirts and shorts, and whenever a load of laundry gets done, I tend to shove them into whatever nook or cranny is available to me.

Since they’re still too young to be left home alone, my wife and I plan our schedules accordingly so one of us is always present. Usually, I give my wife a ten-minute advance notice as to when I’ll be arriving, and her car is already running as I pull into the drive.

Recently, my wife informed me she had a walk-through she couldn’t miss, so I left the office early, got home in time for her to make her appointment, and since it was getting a bit chilly, I went upstairs to rummage through my closet to try and find a sweatshirt, only to find an entire shelf full of my not so fineries on the bedroom floor.

The girls don’t usually get into my things, but as there’s a first time for everything, I called to them, and once they dutifully came, I pointed to the mound of clothes on the floor and asked who’d done it. The synchronicity with which the ‘not me’ chorus began was impressive, and even after I pointed out that they were the only ones in residence, they still denied any culpability. I even went so far as to assure them I wasn’t upset and that there would be no finger-wagging if one of them were to fess up and admit to having ransacked my closet, yet they both continued to insist upon their innocence.

Even though they’re my kids, and I know them as being honest and telling the truth, I still harbored suspicions that either one or both of them had a hand in it, but since it wasn’t something worth pressing them over, I let it go and asked if they’d help me put my clothes back on the shelf, to which they consented.

By the time evening rolled around and we were sitting down to dinner, I’d forgotten all about it until my wife offhandedly said, “I had to go through your closet today. I was looking for a blouse I thought I’d put in there. Sorry about the mess.”

No sooner had my wife finished speaking and I felt eyeballs on me, even though I wasn’t looking in their direction. “Daddy thought we did it,” Malina chimed in, “yeah, we told him we didn’t, but I don’t think he believed us,” Victoria added.

I felt like a slug. They’d told me the truth, and I had no reason not to believe them, yet I’d harbored doubts as to the veracity of their assertions. I apologized to my daughters for assuming something that hadn’t turned out to be true, and I realized how much of a teachable moment that interaction was for me. All pointed to one of them being the culprit, up until my wife added the last piece of the puzzle that clarified the situation.

Jumping to conclusions, especially as to the reason someone is going through a hardship or trial, is likely the worst possible thing we can do when we don’t possess all the relevant information. Job’s three friends had already made up their minds that he had sinned, that he’d done something so foul and odorous as to deserve what was happening to him. Even though Job insisted upon his innocence, his friends would hear none of it.

Until God stepped in and clarified the situation, they lived with the firm conviction that sin was the cause of Job’s troubles, and nothing he said swayed them from their position.

It’s not as though Job didn’t try to convince his friends of his innocence, but once he saw it wasn’t going anywhere, he began to plead his case directly to God. Although Job makes reference to his friends and their remarks and the things they said, Job’s fundamental concern is still God and whether God had anything against him.

If you spend all your time trying to get people to understand you, like you, or be your friend, for the most part, it will be wasted effort with little to show for it. After almost forty years in ministry, I’ve come to realize that the only one whose favor I should garner is God. It’s not a recent realization. It’s something I’ve known for decades now because while men are fickle and inconsistent, God is always there, a present help in times of trouble.

Run to God in your triumphs and defeats. Run to God in your season of plenty as readily as in your season of famine. Run to God when everyone seems to want to be your friend and when the world entire despises you for His name’s sake. Lean on Him, rely on Him, and spend time with Him because prioritizing Him above all else pays eternal dividends.

It may be true that all is vanity in regard to toiling under the sun and laboring to acquire something we can’t take with us to the grave, but it is not the case when it comes to having a relationship with the God of the universe, the Alpha and Omega, the One who formed man from the dust of the earth and breathed life into Him.

Most things aren’t worth pursuing. They’re not worth the time and effort required to acquire them, and only after we’ve toiled and labored, only after we’ve bled and fought and missed out on life, do we realize that the shiny new car is only so until the first rust spot appears, the McMansion we’ve lusted after isn’t spared woodpeckers and hailstorms just because it’s ours, and that new designer brand shirt is just as susceptible to tomato sauce stains as the one you could’ve gotten for a couple of bucks. What remains is what matters, and the only thing that remains once we are gone from this life is whether we knew Jesus as Lord, King, and Savior of our life.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.