Week 22 Job
Without even trying the book of Job is a One-Story-Story-of-the-Bible book.
Reading Job-in-a-week is like reading the bible-in-a-year.
In both there’s a short brilliant and satisfying beginning and a short brilliant and satisfying ending and in between those two there’s a long interlude. The interlude isn’t brilliant or satisfying. It’s as different as Montreal smoked meat and rye bread.
The interlude features things like loss, sadness, despair, tragedy, gloom, sorrow, anger, uncertainty, sickness, death, ruination. Like that.
Another feature of the interlude is guys sitting around trying to get a handle on what’s happening – the book of Job could be subtitled The Book of Unsuccessful Efforts to Dope Out Undopeables.
These days I’m reading one psalm a day and today I read Psalm 88. The sons of Korah wrote 88 but Job easily could have:
O Lord, God of my salvation, I have cried out to you day and night…for my life is full of troubles, and death draws near. I have been dismissed as one who is dead.
You have thrust me down to the lowest pit, into the darkest depths.
O Lord, why do you reject me?
Your fierce anger has overwhelmed me.
You have taken away my companions and love ones; only darkness remains.
88 is a great psalm. An awful psalm. A psalm still in the middle. A desolating psalm that’s as sad and true as the Job interlude.
Note: quotes from Psalm 88:1-4, 6, 14, 16, 18 (NLT version)