Devotionals

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Raw pain. What causes it is different for everyone. For some it’s the death of a loved one. For other’s the death of a relationship. Still other’s suffer the loss of a job, a dream, health, home, possessions, security, or reputation. With loss comes pain.
I need to describe it today. This rawness I feel. It’s deep and aching. It’s a heart that beats with anguish and lungs that breathe with effort. It’s loneliness and despair and contemplation of a future that’s shrouded in darkness.

It’s questions that torment and fear that looms and anxiety that rises like mist covering a deep valley. It’s like the aftermath of war. The rubble left behind by guns and missiles. The eerie silence and acrid smoke. The shock and horror that normalcy could be destroyed in so short a time.

My pain is that of a shattered marriage and broken family and angry children who are looking toward the far country as if it holds the key to peace. It’s the loss of my home and the sense of financial security and parental unity, illusion though it may be, that comes with a marriage. It’s the inescapable reality that all this is happening at the same time I am coming to grips with the fact of middle age and loss of youth and beauty and the sense that there’s plenty of time to make my dreams come true. It’s a sensation that the foundation is crumbling under my feet.

Everything appears to have been torn from my life these days. All except for one thing. My faith in God. Why it remains is beyond me. Rather than foundering, it seems stronger somehow. It’s astounding to me. In loss and pain I suppose one can cling to faith or toss it aside as a useless thing.

Some might say those who cling to it in times of severe trouble are using it as a security blanket. I can’t say that’s true. I’ve come to realize that my faith is built on a relationship, not on what someone’s told me. Jesus has shown Himself as someone quite trustworthy in the decades I’ve come to know Him. He has proven His love to me time and time again to the point that the words of the Apostle Paul make sense to me,“Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later.” (Romans 8:18) This is not all there is. There is a time coming in which God will reveal glory to us, something beautiful and magnificent that cannot be broken and torn and destroyed.

Job, that great patriarch in the Bible, knew this. He loved God and served Him and boy, did his life prosper. He had lots of godly children and tons of money. He had a rock solid reputation and was known as a great philanthropist. But then catastrophe struck and all of it was wiped away. His children were killed, his livelihood destroyed, and his health ravaged.

Job’s sufferings are far too great to be compared to mine. But oh his amazing words of faith, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” (Job 13:15) They find their way into my fog-filled brain and make their way out again through resolute whispers.

But think about what he is saying. Though God slay him? What could he possibly mean? Does Job really think all those terrors came to him through the hand and will of God? When you read the text preceding the calamities, you find God exulting in the faith and righteousness of Job and Satan mocking that faith. He challenges God to prove just how fragile Job’s faith is and retorts, “Yes, but Job has good reason to fear God. You have always put a wall of protection around him and his home and his property. You have made him prosper in everything he does. Look how rich he is! But reach out and take away everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face!”

God allows Satan to test him and all hell breaks loose. But incredibly, the first thing Job does after the torrent of disaster hits him is to worship God! And he refuses to blame Him.

The chapters move through endless conversations between Job and his ‘friends’ who seem to think they have all the answers as to the ‘why’ of all Job’s problems. But in the end, the conversation between Job and the God he refuses to deny brings a glorious climax to this story. God declares His sovereignty and Job repents for questioning His goodness. And then the blessings pour out and the second half of Job’s life is more blessed than the first half.

So what does that mean for those of us who are sitting on the dung heap and crushed beneath devastating circumstances? What does that mean for those of us whose pain is raw?

For me it means the beauty of Jesus Christ is clearly more glorious now than it was when life was full and relatively happy. He hasn’t changed. My circumstances have. And this God that I trust owes me nothing. He is sovereign and intrinsically good. My life is in His hands. And if Satan is testing me then I don’t want to fail this test. I love Jesus. I won’t deny Him. I can’t.

He is sovereign. Whatever He allows me to go through I must go through. How I go through it is something I can control. With raw, wrenching honesty acknowledging the pain and the losses. And clinging to the only thing unshakeable in my life, my belief in God’s goodness and my acknowledgement of His sovereignty. “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.”

When there’s nothing left but resignation, let it be thoroughly immersed in faith. It is the only balm that, when applied to raw pain, brings relief.

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