JOB 14:1-2 – Man who is born of a woman is few of days and full of trouble. He comes out like a flower and withers; he flees like a shadow and continues not.”

THEME OF THE DAY:  LIFE ACCORDING TO JOB.   Mention the name “Job” in a conversation among Christians and immediately two things will likely emerge – suffering and patience.  Of all the things about Job, it is his intense suffering, and his patience remembered the most.  Who has not heard or said the popular phrase describing a person displaying great patience – “Oh, he has the patience of Job.”  But if that is all we recall from Job, two things are true of us.  First, our understanding of what Job teaches is shallow at best.  And that reveals the second thing true of us when it comes to the Old Testament book bearing his name; we haven’t given ourselves over to mine the great riches beyond suffering and patience.  In today’s scripture, Job teaches us two valuable lessons about life; the lessons we need to keep before us, even daily, if we are to be living for the glory of God and good stewards of the only life He has given us.

First, life according to Job is short, very short. In fact, he measures life by days, not decades, or even years.  It goes by so fast, it is just like a couple of days.  Job also uses two illustrations vividly driving home our brief time on this earth – a flower that quickly withers and a shadow that fades rapidly.  James would add another picture and that of a mist – What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes (James 4:14). The application for us?  Better give our best in our service to the Lord and others today while it is today when we have the physical and mental capacities to do so!  And equally pertinent with the short duration of our lives is the priority we place on the spiritual and eternal over the physical and temporal. One life to live. It is short. Make it count for Christ and eternity.

Another truth about life according to Job is the painful reality of it being filled with trouble.  Not a little but overflowing. Not with a few kinds of trouble but with many!  And all we need to do is look in our lives and see the trail and presence of trouble.  We suffer troubles physically, emotionally, and spiritually.  We suffer troubles related to relationships.  We also suffer trouble from a hostile world and a malicious devil.  Jesus told us, “I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world” (John 16:33).

Take time to regularly listen to life according to Job.  He points us with clarity to the results of the fall in the Garden of Eden; trouble and the brevity of life taking us to the consequences of sin.  And the more we listen to Job, the more we renew our minds and direct our lives to what matters most in a brief and troublesome life – the spiritual and eternal, not the physical and temporary.

PRAYER: “Father, help me to rightly interpret life according to Your Word and not my understanding.”
QUOTE: “Life is full of trouble, short, and that is exactly the way God ordained it to be because of sin.”

Because of Him,
Pastor Jim