20240613

eyes of grace

Job 4:1-21 (JDV)

Job 4:1 Then Eliphaz the Temanite answered and said:
Job 4:2 Should anyone try to speak with you when you are so tired? Yet who can keep from speaking?
Job 4:3 Indeed, you have instructed many and have strengthened weak hands.
Job 4:4 Your words have steadied the one who was stumbling and braced the knees that were buckling.
Job 4:5 But now that this has happened to you, you have become tired. It strikes you, and you are overwhelmed.
Job 4:6 Isn’t your piety your confidence, and the integrity of your life your hope?
Job 4:7 Think about this: who has been destroyed when he was innocent? Where have the honest been made to disappear?
Job 4:8 In my experience, those who plow injustice and those who sow trouble reap the same.
Job 4:9 They are destroyed at a single breathing from God and come to an end by the breath of his nostrils.
Job 4:10 The lion may roar and the fierce lion growl, but the teeth of young lions are broken.
Job 4:11 The strong lion dies if it catches no prey, and the cubs of the lioness are scattered.
Job 4:12 A word was brought to me in secret; my ears caught a whisper of it.
Job 4:13 Among unsettling thoughts from visions in the night, when deep sleep comes over men,
Job 4:14 fear and trembling came over me and made all my bones shake.
Job 4:15 I felt a wind on my face, and the hair on my body stood up.
Job 4:16 A figure stood there, but I could not recognize its appearance; a form loomed before my eyes. I heard a whispering voice:
Job 4:17 “Can a mortal be righteous before God? Can a healthy man be purer than his Maker?”
Job 4:18 If God puts no trust in his servants and he charges his angels with foolishness,
Job 4:19 how much more those who dwell in clay houses, whose foundation is in the dust, who are crushed like a moth!
Job 4:20 They are smashed to pieces from dawn to dusk; they be destroyed forever while no one notices.
Job 4:21 Are their tent cords not pulled up? They die without wisdom.

eyes of grace

Eliphaz accuses Job of being impatient and dismayed. The world that Eliphaz knows about is one in which everything happens according to set rules. He cannot imagine a scenario in which a person who is truly righteous is allowed to suffer as Job has. He therefore concludes that Job has committed some secret sin, and failed God in some way. He urges Job to seek his answer in God, and not to insist on his own righteousness. Ordinarily, that argument makes sense: none of us are perfect, and suffering is often the consequence of our own mistakes. But here, it is Eliphaz who is dismayed. It is Eliphaz who has not been patient enough to find the real answer. It is right to direct our suffering friends to God. But sometimes their suffering will not be because they need to be reconciled to him. Sometimes they just need his restoring touch.

LORD, may we not be so quick to condemn those who are unfortunate. May we see them through your eyes of grace, and bring them to you in love.