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Topic: Reward (09/27/04)
TITLE: THAT'S MY REWARD? By Charles Lee 09/29/04 |
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I sympathized with the woman. She had been through the wringer. With the effort of raising a twelve year old son on her own and whatever had pushed her “over the edge”, she was hanging by a thread. I found out that her husband had died undergoing a simple surgery on his eye. It was supposed to be routine but something went horribly wrong. This was while she was in the seventh month of her pregnancy of her now twelve year old son.
I chose to avert my attention elsewhere, so I didn’t hear all the rest. My mind chose to dwell on the subject though. Job did go through an awful lot of grief and it did seem as if God was taking liberties with as faithful a man as there ever was. Still, I just couldn’t bring myself to believe that my Heavenly Father would be malicious toward one of His own children. There had to be more to the story.
We have the luxury of reading about the rest of Job’s life. What we don’t have is an account of what might have been in Job’s life. Only God could know that. We do know that at the end, he had the privilege of knowing more about God. Was it worth the loss of all of his children and everything else that he had? That’s hard for me to judge having never gone through anything near as devastating. What I have gone through and come out on the other side of has been worth every bit of the heartache and pain and trouble. It has drawn me nearer to God and given me a greater knowledge of Him.
Job questioned why he was ever born, but still left his life in the hands of God. Putting myself in his shoes, I ask the question. “This is my reward for faithfulness? This is what I receive for a life of service?” As I look at Job’s life through my eyes, I wonder how it looked through God’s eyes. Undoubtedly, God was looking in view of eternity. An eternity to reward His faithful servant for a job well done.