Job XXI

 A man’s true character is revealed not in his time of plenty but in his time of lack. One can readily pretend at being virtuous and noble when it costs them nothing, but things change, and the mask slips off when you go from hurt to hurt to more hurt and you weren’t truly anchored in Christ but just pretending to be.

It’s in moments of dread and despair that one’s nobility, virtue, and integrity shine through all the brighter if they possessed them to begin with. Your circumstances do not dictate your uprightness or blamelessness. The situation you find yourself in on any given day does not dictate your virtue or integrity. If all it takes for you to give in to despair is a change in tax brackets or the loss of something you attached value to, then your spiritual house was not built upon the rock but upon shifting sand.

1 Corinthians 3:12-13, “Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw, each one’s work will become clear; for the Day will declare it because it will be revealed by fire; and the fire will test each one’s work, of what sort it is.”

Upon hearing that all he had, including his children, were no more, Job’s first reaction wasn’t to try and get what he could back or salvage what little, if anything, remained. He didn’t run to his Rolodex to find a crisis management firm or contact the attorney he had on retainer. He didn’t try to find someone to blame, shake his fists at the heavens, punish the servants who brought him the bad news, or shut himself away from everyone. He arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, fell on the ground, and worshipped. He ran to God first. His instinct wasn’t to try and staunch the bleeding or mitigate the loss; it was to go before God and be in His presence.

What is your first reaction upon getting devastating news? What is your first impulse when you hear something that makes you stop dead in your tracks and instantly changes the course of your life? Is it to try and find answers, to understand the why, to insist you didn’t deserve this happening to you, to get angry, deny it, or is it to run to God, knowing He is the only place where you will find peace and comfort?

When tragedy strikes, the only thing we have complete control over is how we react to it. We can’t turn back time and undo what has been done. Time machines exist in novels and movies but not in real life, so spending days on end wondering what we could have done differently is a wasted effort on our part. In hindsight, everyone’s a genius who would have invested in Amazon when it was two bucks or Tesla when it was a buck and change. We would have been able to identify disruptive technologies like Uber and live on easy street next to a televangelist or his ex-wife, but one shot is all you get at this life, and there are no redos.

Eternity’s a long time to get something as important as eternity wrong. It’s why I involuntarily cringe when I hear someone half my age going on about only living once, not understanding what that really means. It’s not a license to act the fool; it’s an impetus to be sober and make the choices that will lend themselves to an eternity in God’s presence and not the outer darkness.

Had Job’s hope been tethered in anything other than God, his reaction would have been markedly different than what it was. It wasn’t that Job didn’t feel loss or sorrow; he tore his robe and shaved his head, but then he worshiped. Here was a man at the end of his tether, with Satan having done the worst his wicked mind could conceive, having planned the escalation of the destruction and catastrophe as though directing a symphony, and broken, humbled, grieving, shattered, Job worshiped God.

That single tableau, that moment in time, that frame of a man to whom four servants brought worse and worse news, including the death of his ten children, having shaved his head and torn his robe rather than shaking his fists at the heavens, or wailing, inconsolable and broken, worshiped is both humbling and revelatory.

What would it take for you to keep from worshiping God? We find excuses every other day to spend as little time in His presence as possible, and we’re not dealing with the loss of all things material and the death of ten children. It is something to ponder next time we feel too tired at the end of the day to spend time in His presence or are in too much of a rush to get to where we’re going to take a breath and show God gratitude and thankfulness.

Before you think I’m scolding you or I’m sitting perched atop my high horse, I’m as guilty as anyone of not making more time for God than I do. I have my morning routine ironed out well enough. I get a solid two to three hours before the girls wake up and the house comes alive that I can read the Word, meditate upon it, and spend time in prayer, but it seems as though the smallest distraction derails my good intentions, and rather than a full three hours I get maybe a solid two of unadulterated, uninterrupted time with God. It’s little things, too, like the coffee maker not working and having to drive to the local gas station for a cup or the phone blinking telling me a new message came through during the night; distractions are everywhere, and the older I get, the more I learn to tune them out.

Distractions are not innocuous or accidental. They are intentional and purposeful, seeking to keep you from pressing in and spending time with God. The enemy knows that the less time we spend with God, the less likely we are to be strengthened, equipped, encouraged, and edified. He is hoping that one failure to spend time with God turns into two, two turns into three, and then eventually that it becomes a pattern wherein we are always finding reasons not to worship, not to be in His presence, and not to commune with Him.

On his best day, Job worshiped the Lord. On his worst day, Job worshiped the Lord. Every day in between his best day and his worst day, Job likewise worshiped the Lord because God was the desire of Job’s heart, and his circumstances, his environment, his excess, or his lack held no sway and had no bearing on the singular object of his desire. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.