TUESDAY
APRIL 23
READ:
Job
1
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away.
God does not always answer this question in a way that we can understand with our finite minds. One man lost his possessions and family in an incredible test of his faith. You remember . . .
"In the land of Uz there lived a man whose name was Job" (Job 1:1). (That's Uz not Oz!)
Job's first kids: There were ten--three daughters and seven sons. Each had dreams, goals, and expectations about life. But they were unable to live out those passions because God allowed them to be crushed in a storm so that He could prove Job's faithfulness.
Why did God let these young people be snuffed out to prove a point to Satan? Why was God even speaking with Satan? Why did innocent children have to die to prove a man's faith?
The story of Job's first kids demonstrates the incredibly different perspectives of God and man.
Through the prophet Isaiah, God declared, "My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways . . . . As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts" (Isaiah 55:8-9).
Jesus said of His Father: "He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous" (Matthew 5:45).
With these facts in mind, what can we learn as we think about Job's first kids?
We don't always know why bad things happen to good people--but God does. --DP
