REFLECTIONS

September 11th, 2022

Though he slay me, yet will I hope in him;

Job 13:15

When God Isn’t There

How must Job have felt? He lost everything—his children, his home, his crops and livestock, and even his wife’s respect. Where was God when He was needed most? Yet Job didn’t waver. “Though He slay me, yet I will hope in him.”

Of course, we know the whole story. We know that God chose Job to stand up to Satan’s evil ways to prove the strength of human commitment to God. Job didn’t know what God was up to. He only knew emptiness from his losses; still he never questioned God’s presence.

God was there. And God proved his point by the strength of Job’s unyielding faith. God was at work, and Job was his chosen instrument.

Job’s story forever endures within the covers of God’s holy word. His faith proved God’s point to Satan; and Job’s faith set a standard of faith for the friends who confronted him, for his wife and their new family, and for all of us who know the story. Lessons from Job offer hope in those times when we feel God isn’t there. He is.

God works through our lives to influence how others choose to live there’s. “I am part of all I ever met,” Alfred Lord Tennyson wrote in his composition, Ulysses. Just look at the likeness of your own characteristics with those of your parents and others who influenced your ways. In the same way each of us pass some attributes of our lives to those we meet in the journey through this world. Then through them, to the generations.

We all have spheres of influence, and the boundaries of them extend beyond our abilities to understand. God is alongside even when we can’t feel his presence. And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28)

God has a purpose for our lives. He is at work through us as his instruments even as He works on us to reshape our lives for his good purpose.

Whatever victories or defeats, joys or sorrows life may bring, God is always near.

You are the light of the world,

Richard +www.reflectingthesavior.org


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