Job Archives - Natural Helping Hands

Wrestling and Revealing (continuing the study of Job and life)

OK, here we are again. I have some new thoughts as I have been through more of Job. (for my thoughts on the first part of Job see Truth Gets Real)

Job’s friends get very argumentative and aggressive toward the end of the conversation. They seemed right on in the beginning, and seemed like they are sent to reveal to Job something he never saw in his life, YET, their conversations between each other and with Job are strikingly changing as one reads on and on into the book.

I feel like Job at this time in my life. I feel like all the work I have done to be healthy, eat healthy, think healthy, has been for naught. I then think of Job. He reveals what I feel – well, not quite as dramatic and not quite the loss – but, not eating mammal meat and dairy and nuts is life changing and harsh in my mind, and knowing that I can come in contact with something unknowingly every time I am out and about has set in me a fear I cannot seem to quench. I am unsettled with what the purpose is in all of this mess of mineral depletion and deleted foods from my diet from a tiny tick carrying a mammal protein my body will not accept. I cannot blame the Creator of all things. I cannot blame my lifestyle. I cannot blame anything really.

This is one of those “there are no answers” situations. I have to be OK with the not knowing, move on to the healing, and know I can now be a light to others with it. None of this makes things any easier for the mind, heart, and soul.

One of the best renditions of Job comes out of a book called Inspired by Rachel Held Evens, where she screen writes Job, the friends, and Yahweh into a cafeteria scene in our modern times. Job is a revealing that life is a way and the way has ups, downs, deserts and promised lands, and the way is not unscathed.

^{Click the image above to learn more!}

Truth Gets Real

The time to read Job is not when you are well, and all seems good in life. The time to read Job is when you are in a deep trial and loss in life.

Last night, as I read, I asked the Almighty to help me understand I John 1-5. I am stumped to some things in there. This morning I had a deep need to read Job instead, a book I have not read in quite some time, or just the ending. I have read the first 10 chapters. His friends came and sat with him, said nothing, to comfort him, which is what they needed to keep on doing and say little. They had messages and opinions, but they knew the temperament of Job, and they knew that he was upright in all his ways and wise. When they spoke, the Bible translations want to belittle them and say that they were not helping, because Job was anguished by their words and became worse each time they spoke. YET, there is purpose in all they said and did. I am hearing and seeing the faith of Job, who is struggling and wrestling with Yahweh in his innocent anguish; he admits they are telling some truth but he knows he does not fit into it and will not give in to it, but he cannot figure out just why he is not giving in and why he does not fit in to the common mold of what his friends say–what he knows most fall into. He is in pain, angry, humiliated, brought down, removed from normal life as it was, and feeling tortured. He is asking for revealing; this revealing is coming forth by a cause which Job will never know . His friends are doing what Job had done with them so many times before. The tables are being turned. But, Job was a good, righteous man, not perfect, but not deserving of anything he is going through. Job is a fault in the bible to us, right in the middle, to show us that life is not all cut and stacked with answers to everything.

I will continue to read Job this week. I believe I will see truth in it I never saw before, only because I am in the middle of a physical and spiritual battle of my own. I believe I have something still to see in order to fully heal from this AG and other allergy weeds that have developed in my healthy body and rocked my world. I am anguished by the constant foods and products I cannot use or eat or even be around. I am puzzled by the healing I thought I had, and now feel I never really had, or have I lost it somehow. I have lived a healthy lifestyle, and yet I find myself with a body that shows deterioration that does not fit into the “healthy” lifestyle results I had in mind.

OH, about John, I have not been back to John yet, but maybe I needed to wrestle with it also for a while; this is not a bad thing but what we are meant to do with the Word.

Rejoice in affliction, and allow revealing. It is real. It does prick the deepest part of the soul.