Teach me to do your will, for you are my God. Let your good spirit lead me on a level path. Psalm 143.10

Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. Isaiah 58:9.

Reading our chapter, Job 30, I can’t help but think how different it is to know something in an abstract way without understanding the truth. Job has been stripped of everything that distinguished him as better than others. His wealth is gone, his standing is gone, he is down in the depths of a life scorned by others. But now they mock me, men younger than I, whose fathers I would have disdained to put with my sheep dogs. v. 1. He goes on to describe their meager existence on the fringes – Haggard from want and hunger, they roamed the parched land in desolate wastelands at night…they were banished from human society, shouted at as if they were thieves…a base and nameless brood, they were driven out of the land…v. 3, 5, 8. And now…Terrors overwhelm me; my dignity is driven away as by the wind, my safety vanishes like a cloud. v. 15. Job ascribes his circumstances to God and says, He throws me into the mud, and I am reduced to dust and ashes. v. 19.

I have not been driven to the despair Job has experienced from losing everything that made him who he was in his and in others eyes. I can’t help but contrast the elevated status he enjoyed – with the status he describes of the destitute. How many people throughout the ages of men have suffered in just such a destitute status? How many have enjoyed the elevated status Job once enjoyed? 

Where does that leave us? What about today? God is here always. Satan will be until Jesus returns. Satan pulls us towards hate, condemning, enslaving. The 2nd verse cited above in Isaiah is so beautiful. What came before that beautiful Scripture? Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter – when you see the naked, to clothe them, and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness will go before you, and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I. Isaiah 58:6-9. 

God – Father, Son, Spirit – is our help always and He will always help us to choose righteousness unto Life. Life that is good. Life where sin is no more. Job is a stark chapter of not just Job and his friends, but of all of us. Job thinks he has been reduced to dust and ashes in everything that has been taken away from him and in all he is suffering. What about us? What are we? We, like Job and his friends, like the young men mocking Job and those who disdain those young men – are children of our Creator God and we are loved. God is our help always and He will help us love and be loved. All of Scripture shows us. God’s righteousness shows us a better way out of the chains of the oppression of sin and it is Good! He knows what we are and the sins that drag us down. And He loves us. Thank You, Lord, for so great and faithful a Love. Help us take Your hand and learn from You. There is so much we need to understand that will help our hearts to rejoice with You!