Job’s dark time makes anything we may experience pretty much
pale in comparison. His friends
(and I’m using that term loosely) only added to his misery. Once we’ve experience a dark time
ourselves, Neil says: We don’t try
to teach or instruct or advise.
I’ve noticed that the worse the stuff I’ve been through, the less I have
to say to someone who’s going through it now, and the more I have an instinct
to just be there and listen. Job’s
friends apparently hadn’t crossed that threshold.
David’s early years are pretty much a story of a life poured
out. He was being hunted by Saul,
was living in caves, and every hope for a normal life, let alone the one God
had promised, had been crushed out of him.
God didn’t send those trials to David because he deserved
them; He wasn’t punishing David, nor had He changed His mind about David
eventually being king. Through
them, though, God worked compassion and brokenness into David’s heart. It happened because David chose to hurt
instead of harden to bitterness.
I’m tempted, even today, to let the things that hurt make a
spot on my heart glaze over and harden, instead of staying soft (and
painful). I think I needed to hear
again these words from Neil:
Perhaps God brings us to the end of our resources so we can discover the
vastness of His.
There are things I don’t know what to do with that I’m
turning over to Him today.
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