In the last three years, Job and I have become well acquainted.  I don’t qualify for the Job award prior to his disaster.  I was not upright and blameless, fearing God and shunning evil.  It’s more than likely that the disaster that came into my life can be traced to a long history of disobedience.  I come from Jacob stock.  But I have graduated to the household of Job.

Job survived his disaster.  He was still alive after the loss of all his possessions and health.  But being alive was little consolation.  The majority of the story of Job is not about loss.  All of that takes place in just a few sentences in the first two chapters.  Job’s story is about uselessness, about those prolonged times when life doesn’t seem worth living because there is no apparent purpose.  That’s why I have moved into Job’s house.  He and I share this one thing in common:  we don’t know why we should keep going.

Don’t misunderstand me.  Just like Job, I still believe in the sovereignty of God.  Job and I have never questioned God’s control of our situations.  And just like Job, I still believe that God knows what He is doing.  There is no doubt in my mind that God is serving His own purposes in the midst of the existential despair.  After all, God is God.  He can do what He wants to do.  And since Job and I both believe that God is also righteous, what He does is governed by the highest good.  But Job and I share the same concern.  We just don’t see any reason for the lives that we lead.   We both want to hear from God.  We just want God to say, “Now, let me tell you why I’m doing this.”  We both believe that if we only knew why, we might be able to bear this with a little comfort.  We are not asking for the life we live to be fixed.  We just want to know that it has some purpose.

Perhaps it’s simply a mark of fractured humanity that we seek usefulness.   I suspect that the human condition requires purpose and I think we were designed that way.  After all, God gave Adam work to do long before Adam fell.  But with the fall, the insight into the relationship between my work and the purposes of God became clouded.  Now it is possible to not only misunderstand that relationship but also to lose sight of it altogether.  When this happens, you and I arrive at the middle chapters of Job.  If life is going to be this frustrating, why go on?  What purpose can I serve when I am so empty myself?

It takes time to reach this stage.  Disaster can strike in an instant, but the erosion of purpose is more like a slow leak that can’t be stopped.  I am sure that Job was aware of the constant dissipation of his life, that dripping reminder that what he valued was bleeding away.  I know that I feel it.  Intensely.  Day by day my reason for living seems to escape me, one small event at a time.  I write.  My work is rejected.  I network.  My calls are not returned.  I search the jobs ads.  Nothing materializes.  I meet potential clients.  The contracts aren’t signed.  I find a bit of work.  The invoices aren’t paid.  Bit by bit the usefulness of my life escapes me until one day I realize that I have nothing left to give.  I am drained.  The last drop of purpose has fallen into the sand and been swallowed up by a world where I don’t count.  And I turn to the God of the heavens and cry, “Why, Lord?  What purpose of Yours does it serve for me to be a useless creature crying out to You?  All I wanted was to please You, to serve You.  And all I have is this empty life.  Lord, is it too much to ask You to tell me why?”

I suppose that I should take consolation in the story of Elijah. He sat on the shelf while God arranged things.  The potter and the clay, you know.  But the truth is that I am not much comforted.  I want to be of use.  I want to see meaning in my life.  I want to know that what I do matters.  I can wait.  “Yes, Lord, I am even willing to wait.  But couldn’t You just give me some idea of what I am waiting for?”

Job’s story is a graphic display of the price of commitment.  “Even if He kills me, I will still worship Him” is a powerful statement of unflinching loyalty.  Job and I don’t doubt that God is doing something.  We believe in the active Creator, not in the master craftsman who finished his work and went on vacation.  We know God is up to something.  But Job and I feel left out.  We feel as though whatever God is doing, it doesn’t include us.  All around us life swirls in kaleidoscopic mixture.  But we wait, sidelined, warming the bench.  And we were not wired to simply watch the game.

The book of Job is more than a cleverly disguised discussion of the suffering of the righteous.  It is emotional theology.  It is a story about how I feel when God seems absent from my life.  Job’s story tells me that I am not alone in this dark world, but it does not tell me that God will answer me.  I am left only with the answer God gave Paul.  “My grace is sufficient”.

“Yes, Lord.  I know that Your grace is sufficient.  But today I despair.  Today I am crushed.  Today my mind cannot reconcile the uselessness of my life with a God who has a plan for me.  Today, Lord, I desperately need that grace.”