Pray:
"Guide me in your truth and teach me, for You are God my Savior, and my hope is in You all day long" (Psa. 25:4,5).
Read:
Job 4:1-21
Reflect:
What do you believe about suffering?
The first of Job's so-called comforters, Eliphaz, speaks, and they're not comforting words! He and the other friends each have a different way of explaining (however fruitlessly) suffering. You can read the collected speeches of each and discover a uniquely wrong-headed theme. Eliphaz, for instance, suggests here and in all his speeches (chs. 4,5,15,22) that the innocent never suffer (7) and that those who sow evil reap it (8). However, our experience suggests that this isn't always true!
But Eliphaz does say some things that can help us to live with suffering, even if his argument about why there is suffering is unhelpful. He asks rhetorically whether human ideas of righteousness and justice are superior to God's (17). If we acknowledge that's not true, we're left with the necessity of having to trust that God's ways aren't our ways, and his ways are better.
Trusting that God knows what he's doing, and asking his help to keep on trusting despite our situation (34:32a), will help us live well in the midst of suffering (13:15).
Apply:
As you look at situations which you do not understand, avoid trying to answer the unanswerable, and rest in God.
Pray:
Father, in a world where the wicked prosper and the righteous suffer, give me vision beyond this life.
