That’s Job with a long ‘o’. The Job with a short ‘o’ is another post.

For Mother’s Day I got a Chronological Bible. I think it’s one of my favorite gifts ever. The last two weeks I’ve been reading about Job. As in ‘the patience of’. Well, he wasn’t very patient. I’m not sure the author of that old cliche had actually read any of the book. However, his whining and crying is all too easy for me to identify with. That insight inspired me to look at the story a little differently. My inspiration has come from reading about Job’s friends. The very first thing that struck me was that they knew about his distress and went to see him. They didn’t do much at first other than share in his sorrow. And listen. They weren’t able to give him the help that he needed. But they listened.

I am a mother.  I am a fixer by nature. When my friends have problems, I want to help them fix what’s broken. As my mind starts whirling away as possible solutions, I forget what they really needed was for me to listen. As I read through the pages of counsel offered up from Job’s friends Eliphaz, Bildad and Zophar and, in turn, Job’s defensive replies,  I realized that they didn’t have the answers either. And they, just like me, had stopped listening. They wanted to fix Job’s problems the only way they knew how. Even though the things they told Job weren’t wrong, they weren’t right either. They assumed that Job’s torment was a result of his sin. I’m not sure they were entirely wrong in their assumption, as the young man Elihu points out later. But they forgot their purpose of comforting Job in the effort to solve the problem. Their mistake was as serious as Job’s. They were convinced that they understood God’s purpose.

How often, as friends, do we offer loads of advice to our hurting sisters, convinced that we see their problems as they truly are? Do we see our friends as the next project to be fixed? Or simply as a wounded spirit in need of a caring ear?

Do we pray with our sisters in praise of God’s greatness, or for removal from (or of) the hardship? Do we remember that God is in charge and that we may not see the whole picture to understand the whys?

In 33:23-25 Elihu says “Yet if there is an angel on his [a man's] side as a mediator, one out of a thousand to tell a man what is right for him, to be gracious to him and say, ‘Spare him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom for him’ — then his flesh is renewed like a child’s; it is restored as in the days of his youth” (NIV).

Praise God that we have a mediator on our side! Jesus paid our ransom long ago. We can offer our praise for God’s grace and the renewal of our soul. Instead of chastising our sisters so that we can ‘fix’ them, let us be guided to praise God with them so they can see that God is in control of even the worst situations. He understands the ‘whys’. Let Him be the fixer.

“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”  Romans 15:7

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