When Will This End?

Listening is hard work.

Listening well provides the foundation for healing and hope. This is I think a foundational principle of Scripture and life. But, I don’t believe our world is typically good at truly listening. Listening is hard work!

Proverbs 18:13 NIV

To answer before listening— that is folly and shame.

We must be careful we don’t just listen to respond instead of truly understanding. This is partially what James says about being “quick to listen and slow to speak.

Sometimes life is unbearable and unimaginable.

Reality is sometimes stranger than fiction. I read a story this week, not sure where, that a lady was at a baseball game many many years ago (before netting) and got hit with a foul ball and was injured. As the medics were carrying her out on a stretcher another foul ball hit her breaking her elbow.

The story of Job is another case in point.

Learning to listen to pain.

I believe it was C.S. Lewis who said, “pain is God’s megaphone”. Not in a sense of yelling at us but speaking to us in the midst of pain. He is not absent when we are suffering but present.

God is aware and concerned.

Notice this in our text. He is not aloof nor unmoved. He still protects us and sustains us with His grace and wisdom.

It is hard to live out our faith when we don’t understand.

Yet, if we could understand all things we would not need faith. Job’s example to us is learning to live out a faith even in the midst of pain, trauma, and the unknown. This is one of the hardest things the people of God can do.

Job suffers physically and relationally.

He is not going to be treated as an outcast and goes to the place outside the community. What he experiences changes him. Same is true for us.

Job’s wife also suffers and wants to know: When will this end?

Rarely do we truly suffer alone. Yet, our pain and trauma will try to isolate ourselves. I make an interpretive decision with Job’s wife: her words are colored by her pain.

We cannot shortcut healing.

I think this is partially what Job’s wife wants to do; and I understand this! Yet, Job realizes it is not always this easy.

In our pain, be careful what we say.

Job does this. I don’t think he truly understands all he is saying but he is careful to not be rash nor rushed in his words.

In other’s pain, be careful what we say.

We will get to the speeches some next week but this is worth hearing today. As we try to be the healing presence of Jesus in our world please be careful what you say to someone in pain.

Our pain is not the whole story.

Life is bigger than what happens to us. Job reminds us every week of this truth.

Jesus is willing to heal us and set us free.

This is the truth of Scripture.

Luke 4:18–19 NIV

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”