Daily Devotional • September 4
A Reading from Job 12:1, 14:1-22
1 Then Job answered:
“A mortal, born of woman, few of days and full of trouble,
2 comes up like a flower and withers,
flees like a shadow and does not last.
3 Do you fix your eyes on such a one?
Do you bring me into judgment with you?
4 Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean?
No one can.
5 Since their days are determined,
and the number of their months is known to you,
and you have appointed the bounds that they cannot pass,
6 look away from them and desist,
that they may enjoy, like laborers, their days.
7 “For there is hope for a tree,
if it is cut down, that it will sprout again
and that its shoots will not cease.
8 Though its root grows old in the earth
and its stump dies in the ground,
9 yet at the scent of water it will bud
and put forth branches like a young plant.
10 But mortals die and are laid low;
humans expire, and where are they?
11 As waters fail from a lake
and a river wastes away and dries up,
12 so mortals lie down and do not rise again;
until the heavens are no more, they will not awake
or be roused out of their sleep.
13 O that you would hide me in Sheol,
that you would conceal me until your wrath is past,
that you would appoint me a set time and remember me!
14 If mortals die, will they live again?
All the days of my service I would wait
until my release should come.
15 You would call, and I would answer you;
you would long for the work of your hands.
16 For then you would not number my steps;
you would not keep watch over my sin;
17 my transgression would be sealed up in a bag,
and you would cover over my iniquity.
18 “But the mountain falls and crumbles away,
and the rock is removed from its place;
19 the waters wear away the stones;
the torrents wash away the soil of the earth;
so you destroy the hope of mortals.
20 You prevail forever against them, and they pass away;
you change their countenance and send them away.
21 Their children come to honor, and they do not know it;
they are brought low, and it goes unnoticed.
22 They feel only the pain of their own bodies
and mourn only for themselves.”
Meditation
In Job’s poem of lament, he struggles against waves of despair brought on by unimaginable suffering — in today’s terms, what we would call trauma. The observations of trauma researcher Judith Herman capture Job’s experience: traumatic events “undermine the belief systems that give meaning to human experience. They violate the victim’s faith in a natural or divine order and cast the victim into a state of existential crisis.” Job is in just such a state, standing in a “Holy Saturday” kind of place — a place of brokenness, confusion, uncertainty, fear, and loneliness. In this place, Job struggles to make meaning of his life, as he feels his hope and his trust in God slipping away.
And yet, there are glimmers in this poem of yearning: a yearning for forgiveness, a yearning for loving relationship with God, even a yearning for life beyond the grave. It is as if Job is standing before a thin veil and can ever-so-faintly see a future hope that seems too good to be true, so he turns away. But his doubts and distress do not stop Job from yearning for God’s presence.
Standing on the other side of the Resurrection, it may be difficult to imagine a life without the hope that Jesus provides. But in times of deep suffering, we may find ourselves standing in a “Holy Saturday” place, where hope is faint and faith, fragile. In that place, the strongest demonstration of our faith might simply be the courage to stay in God’s presence and show him our struggle. Our Lord knows our suffering because he has already entered into it, and he promises that we are never alone.
Monica Coakley, a graduate of Nashotah House Theological Seminary, provides pastoral care to men on Tennessee’s death row. She lives with her family on a small farm and hoards books and yarn.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Ikwerre – The Church of Nigeria (Anglican Communion)
Christ Church, Georgetown, Washington, D.C.