June 22nd - Reflection

Job 19:1-22 (NRSV)
Job questions God's ways

Then Job answered:
"How long will you torment me,
and break me in pieces with words?
These ten times you have cast reproach upon me;
are you not ashamed to wrong me?
And even if it is true that I have erred,
my error remains with me.
If indeed you magnify yourselves against me,
and make my humiliation an argument against me,
know then that God has put me in the wrong,
and closed his net around me.
Even when I cry out, 'Violence!' I am not answered;
I call aloud, but there is no justice.
He has walled up my way so that I cannot pass,
and he has set darkness upon my paths.
He has stripped my glory from me,
and taken the crown from my head.
He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone,
he has uprooted my hope like a tree.
He has kindled his wrath against me,
and counts me as his adversary.
His troops come on together;
they have thrown up siegeworks against me,
and encamp around my tent.

"He has put my family far from me,
and my acquaintances are wholly estranged from me.
My relatives and my close friends have failed me;
the guests in my house have forgotten me;
my serving girls count me as a stranger;
I have become an alien in their eyes.
I call to my servant, but he gives me no answer;
I must myself plead with him.
My breath is repulsive to my wife;
I am loathsome to my own family.
Even young children despise me;
when I rise, they talk against me.
All my intimate friends abhor me,
and those whom I loved have turned against me.
My bones cling to my skin and to my flesh,
and I have escaped by the skin of my teeth.
Have pity on me, have pity on me, O you my friends,
for the hand of God has touched me!
Why do you, like God, pursue me,
never satisfied with my flesh?

Reflection
It seems in many cases that's it's when we are at our lowest, that we finally notice the touch of God's hand in our lives. When we have given up hope in everything, including ourselves and God, we turn and notice that the hand of God has touched me! We are open and humble and our lives are laid bare and open for all to see, and at that point, we realize that God is closer than you could ever imagine, and we feel the touch of God's hand.

And then it dawns on us. God did not reject us...God lives through this horror with us...God was at our side, and we were just so focused on ourselves and our own pain that we couldn't open outward to see the presence of God by our side all along. We tend to close in on ourselves and roll up into a little ball, closing out the world and any of God's presence. And then we feel it...that touch...that hug...that whisper of compassionate love of God.

At first we assume that this touch is just more punishment. After all, in our sinfulness, we deserve nothing more than damnation. But we soon find out that this touch is not a touch of more pain and suffering...it is a touch of love and understanding.

Understanding, because the God touching us has felt the pain, rejection, and the totality of all of our sin on a cross. Jesus felt this pain, not curled in on himself, focusing on the pain, but laid open on the cross with arms stretched wide to include all of the pain of all humankind. Jesus felt and died for this pain for us, to know what that pain is, to open it all up to God the Father, and to save us from sin, death and the devil, and to make us his children.

Claimed in the pain of the cross, Jesus brings us to the throne of God the Father and becomes one in us and through us that we may joyfully unfold from our selfishness and open up wide to go and tell of a Savior that has lived through the pain we each feel in life to bring an eternal life of joy, compassion and love! Thanks be to God!

Prayer
Lord, thank you for experiencing what I experience. In joy I open up from my selfish centered ways. I open up from concentration of my own pain, to see your open arms in your pain to live in a pain of joy and thanksgiving with you this day. Send me to bring comfort and the touch of God to those in pain and suffering this day that they may see your glory and hear your message...even in and through the pain. --- Amen