Today, I am reading and commenting on  Job 1-5.

When Job received word that all of his herds and flocks had been destroyed immediately followed by the news that his children had all been killed, his response was to mourn and worship God.  He acknowledged that all that he had had had come from God (Okay, that is an awkward sentence structure with three hads in a row).  Then, when he was suffering with painful sores over his entire body, he still refused to turn from God, or hold Him to blame.  When his wife told him to curse God and will himself to death, he told her that such talk was that of those who foolishly lacked morals.  He took the position that we should accept both the good and the bad which God sends our way and continue to faithfully serve Him.  Finally, after his friends commiserated with him in silence for seven days, Job expressed his misery by wishing that he had never been born.  Even here he does not hold God at fault, he just expresses his despair over what has happened to him and the physical pain he was suffering by saying he would rather that he had never lived than experience what he was experiencing.  His friend Eliphaz responds to Job’s deep despair  by telling him that if he would just confess his sin and throw himself on God’s mercy things would get better.  When we face hardship, let us follow Job’s example.  And when our friends face hardship, let us understand that everyone has a limit to what they can take and pray to God that He give them relief rather than tell them that they should not talk like that.

I use the daily Bible reading schedule from “The Bible.net” for my daily Bible reading.