When there comes a time that I know that I will never again be comfortable, either from getting old or a grave injury or near death, I can remember that today I was comfortable. Today was good.
God, this body is not mine and belongs to you. All I have is borrowed. Times will come when the good things you have given me are no more. Times will come when even my health will leave me. The days that my bones unwillingly drag along the skin that clings, let me not rebuke you. Let me not debate with you about justification for bitterness. Where I fail in these challenges let me see you that I may know to disown my failure and repent.
I think about the times that Job feels his suffering is unjustified when measured against his good deeds and faith. I think, he rightly wonders how you might allow his suffering. He longs for when he had good things in abundance. He is angry even, but always confirms your divinity and keeps his wisdom even when he lacks understanding.
Then I think about Jonah. What a simple and short story that shows how uninteresting is the worldly man. Jonah to me seems a satire of a man, opposite of Job, with shallow faith and full of bitterness and entitlement. Most of all, Jonah is without fear of the Lord.
You see, Jonah starts out his story in disobedience to God going his own way. Job, even at the loss of his possessions and family, praises you Lord and keeps faith. In a time of trouble Jonah becomes wise and repents seeing his fault among the storm and turns to God. Yet how quickly does he get angry when a tree appearing in a day that gives him shade is taken from him again in a day. A tree he neither planted nor tended. Job always did right, was always wise, and after a life of suffering questioned why. Why should the Lord permit suffering to the righteous? Jonah did one good thing after failure and repentance and then questioned God for taking a tree he did not plant.
Then I think about Jesus, my Lord and Savior, who chooses willfully the crucifixion after sweating blood in a garden. Before His death, he too asks you Father God, “why have you forsaken me?” Then, acknowledging the power of your will, he gives you his spirit. To your hands, left and right, he gives you his soul.
I think about Job’s reward. He received everything he had double. I think about Jesus’ first miracle, praised because the best wine was saved for last. I think about Jonah, who ends the story in the desert angry with no tree to shade his head.
Blood and water gushed forth from heart of Jesus that God maybe merciful. By the water of our baptism we are justified and saved by His blood.
The fear of the Lord is wisdom; and avoiding evil is understanding.
Job had wisdom and misunderstood. Jonah understood enough to beg a second chance. Jesus is divine.
The Lamp Stand 