Encouragement

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NIGHT SEASONS

Job 7


Job’s opening words, here in chapter 7, immediately bring me back to the truth Job stated to his wife when she encouraged him to just curse God, and die:

You speak as one of the foolish women speak? Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?

Job knew that he knew that he knew God, and God alone, stood sovereign over his life. Job’s days were not in his own hands, they rested utterly in God’s. Curse God? Never! In his anguish, weary of this life? Absolutely!

I’ve lost count of how many times I thought, I’ve stated, “I’m weary of having to stay strong, weary of having to hold on.” No rest in sight. No end to the weariness. No perceivable light at the end of the tunnel.

Like Job, it’s not that I’ve lost sight of the hope I have in God, it’s merely the temporal weariness of this clay, and all that residing in it brings. Even when not uttering from my lips, how oft has my soul cried against the allotted months of futility, and the wearisome nights appointed me.

I feel, all throughout Job 7, Job’s struggle between faith and sight... and how oft sight burrows deep into my soul, adding soul-anguish, to the emotional and physical pain I’m already drowning in.

How I thank God for Job’s transparency, for it gives me insight into truths at play in my own life, truths, until hearing them uttered by another, I don’t understands as being at work within me.

… I will speak in the anguish of my spirit; I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.

Hearing these word fall from Job I see more clearly. Seeds of bitterness, unattended, left to grow, reap a harvest of sight-fruit … despair, discontent, joylessness, anger, self-centeredness … and still the list grows. Absent rejoicing, trust, patience, joy, longsuffering, faith … and all that gives life.

Take every thought captive to the mind of Christ … how vital that becomes in the night seasons of life.

I’m quick to cry heavenward … Take this cup from me! In fact, the Almighty God, Who looking not on the outward appearance, but on my heart, hears my soul cry that over and over, even when the thought is not consciously formed in my mind. Yet His love prevails, and I am awash in His grace.

Only from time to time, do I complete Jesus’ petition and move into His resting obedience … yet not My will, but Thine be done.

It is so much easier, to say with Job from the bitterness of soul … I loathe my life; I would not live forever. If breathlessness would just come, then, then, O LORD, I would find rest.

How easily my soul gets caught in the vortex of the night season, a vortex sucking me downward, drawing my eyes inward, until I forget the stage … have you considered spoken by Almighty’s voice, spoken for His divine purpose.

Job wasn’t granted the stage* God’s grace gives me insight to. Yet, even with my insight do I not rend the heaven’s with Job’s same cry:

What is man, that You should exalt him,
That You should set Your heart on him,
That You should visit him every morning,
And test him every moment?
How long?
Will You not look away from me,
And let me alone till I swallow my saliva?
Have I sinned?
What have I done to You, o watcher of men?
Why have You set me as Your target,
So that I am a burden to myself?
Why then do You not pardon my transgression,
And take away my iniquity?
(Job 7:17-21)

What is it about man, about these clay vessels, that isn’t satisfied unless his pointing finger finds a target on which to rest? We profess God’s sovereignty with our lips, a sovereignty oft beyond our understanding; but don’t we really hunger after a box in which to place blame? A box neatly giving explanation to suffering?

Don’t our hearts, doesn’t mine, really rest in our own understanding?

Now as Jesus passed by, He saw a man who was blind from birth. And His disciples asked Him, saying “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” (John 9:1-2)

But our ways are not God’s ways. Our understanding is not His. Innocent do suffer.

Praise God for granting us insight into the stage on which I live, on which you live.
Blessed be His name that Jesus knew, and understood, and could say with every fiber of His soul … neither this man nor his parents sinned, but that the works of God should be revealed in him.

Night seasons come, to each of us. Why? Because God’s heart is set on me … that His mighty working in me will be revealed and bring Him glory as I rest in His grace.

May the grace that enfolds me within the sovereignty of His love enable me, in those moments of darkness, in those seasons of the night where understanding can only rest in Him, say in wholeness with the Son … not my will but Thine …


* (Job 1:6-12; Job 2:1-6)





© 14 March 2006
DeAnna L. Brooks

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