Job. No Doubt.

“It is better,” said French writer, Anatole France, “to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.”  

This observation seems particularly appropriate midway through a book of the Bible that sometimes feels like trying to swim through a vat of molasses.

We’re clear on the friends by now. Evidently they were all born without the compassion gene.

Then, suddenly, in chapter 19, Job provides for us one of the most familiar and moving passages in his story:

O, that my words could be recorded, O, that they could be inscribed on a monument, carved with an iron chisel and filled with lead, engraved forever in the rock.

What words, Job?

I know that my Redeemer lives, and He will stand upon the earth at last. And after my body has decayed, yet in my body I will see God. I will see Him for myself. Yes, I will see Him with my own eyes. How my heart longs within me.

It has been called one of the greatest Old Testament prophecies of the coming Redeemer.

This is no pseudo “word”, no faux “proclamation” made while prancing around on a massive stage under enormous klieg lights in a stadium filled with tens of thousands and broadcasting around the world via state-of-the-art media systems.

Oh, no. It is spoken in the rasping voice of a diseased and broken man. A real man. One who certainly has serious doubts and desperate questions about God’s reasons for allowing his calamities.

But about one thing there is no doubt. There is a living Redeemer. And Job, one day restored, will see Him.

It is our promise, too, of course. And sometimes it is comforting to simply stop and remember that there will be a day. There will be a day when we will stand before a Savior who loves us, who never permitted one thing that did not some way, somehow, work for our good.

No doubt.

In what ways has personal calamity intensified your faith?