Job: the voice of grief

This year one of my resolutions was to work through the topic of grief and how to deal with it from a biblical perspective. It's been a journey! And I started with Job because it's a pretty good place to start when thinking about the Old Testament stories of grief. He loses almost everything he has, from his children to his possessions to his health (see Job 1-2). But he finds his way to the place of praise: “Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return. The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” (Job 1:21)

It's hard to worship God through suffering - this is why Job is tested in this way. He does worship, but not without questioning, as the book continues. It's not an easy journey for him.

As you read through Job's speeches, you get a real sense of what I call the 'voice of grief'. These are words which reflect the sense you get when you're grieving that you'll never be happy again. Read Job 7:
'Has not man a hard service on earth,
and are not his days like the days of a hired hand?
Like a slave who longs for the shadow,
and like a hired hand who looks for his wages,
so I am allotted months of emptiness,
and nights of misery are apportioned to me.
When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’
But the night is long,
and I am full of tossing till the dawn.
My flesh is clothed with worms and dirt;
my skin hardens, then breaks out afresh.
My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle
and come to their end without hope.

“Remember that my life is a breath;
my eye will never again see good.' (v1-7)

I love the way that Scripture gives us an honest depiction of gut-wrenching grief here. This sense of everything being empty, and a restless frustration, is perhaps a necessary part of the all-consuming stage of grief. However, these ideas can become lies the enemy uses to keep you in despair. When tragedy occurs, Satan sees an opportunity to bring people into bondage. Endings always bring new beginnings, but Satan strives to keep us out of the new place God has prepared by keeping us in the past. It's too easy, in your hurt, to question God and let this become a barrier. We can start to think God isn't good and can't be trusted. But James 1:17 affirms that God is good and He can't be anything else. We don't have answers -we know 'in part' (1 Cor 13:12)- and trust will always require us to accept unanswered questions. (See Joyce Meyer's teaching 'Overcoming Grief' here).