Job continues his lamentations as he wonders why God has let him live. Yet I wonder Job is the only one who is tempted in this direction when enduring suffering. No doubt about it, life can look pretty grim at times. We look around us and see destruction. We consider our physical symptoms and can wholeheartedly confess they are downright unpleasant. We feel that nonspecific pain in our bodies and wonder if it will ever go away. We burn with fever and think the world will never return to normal. We are tired and can't rest. We have things to do and can't do them. We try to recover from a malady and find that we are incapable of doing anything to make ourselves recover. Wouldn't it be easier if the Lord were simply to take us to be with him? Wouldn't it be nice if we were translated into that place where there is no more crying, no more pain, no fear, no suffering at all?
Believe it or not, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ has experienced all this. He left heavenly perfection to take on frail humanity, to walk around with us, to suffer from heat and cold, injury and fatigue. He is acquainted with our griefs. He has borne in his body the very same sufferings we bear. And we can rest assured that our Lord has a purpose in supporting us here in this earthly life, regardless of the situation. The sovereign Lord would in fact remove us from this earthly existence if he did not have a purpose for us. That purpose simply may be invisible to us, as it was to Job. In the mercy of God we live. In his mercy we endure hardship at times. In his mercy we look to him who suffered on our behalf and we realize that our sufferings are nothing compared to his. We long for our heavenly home and we are enabled to express that longing to others, others who do not have a hope in eternity. We long for our heavenly home and we encourage other believers with that same longing. We carry some of the suffering of Christ in our bodies and we see that his suffering on our behalf was quite real. We look to our Lord in hope, knowing that we don't have that hope in ourselves. We are brought low and we exalt our Lord.
Let us exalt the Lord together, whether in delight or in suffering.
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