Job 3: The Pain of Life

“Why is light given to those in misery, and life to the bitter of soul, to those who long for death that does not come, who search for it more than for hidden treasure, who are filled with gladness and rejoice when they reach the grave? Why is life given to a man whose way is hidden, whom God has hedged in? For sighing has become my daily food; my groans pour out like water. What I feared has come upon me; what I dreaded has happened to me. I have no peace, no quietness; I have no rest, but only turmoil.” – Job 3:20-26

Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar who are Job’s closest friends come around to sympathize with him in the midst of extreme turbulence. The only thing they can do is first to listen, and second to love and encourage him. But it is in the support of these friends Job is able to cry out his grief. It is almost as if a trigger was set off to express his anguish and pain.

By this chapter, Job has broken down to the deepest and darkest point in his life so far. He has been brought to the limit of his human capacity to hold in his pain and grief. But instead of cursing God, he curses his own life. We may have found ourselves in a similar place before – looking back on the past and regretting everything and all of the life we have lived thinking that what we have endured and even celebrated had only lead up to this most painful and heart-wrenching time of life. Job curses the day of his birth because he wishes he never lived to experience it. He is beyond grieved and in extreme anguish.

There are times I have witnessed brothers and sisters lose everything that was important to them in their life. Their careers, their family members, and even spouses. As a minister, those times were the most difficult and challenging to not only console, but to be a spiritual support. Humanly, there is really not that much that anyone can say to someone in so much anguish, grief, or pain. Especially when you could not possibly picture or understand what they are going through. The only thing you can do is listen and guard them away from temptations of sin. You do the best you can to direct them towards the presence of the Lord. You hope that they would see a glimmer of light in the midst of all the darkness. But sometimes, people don’t want the light. They want to only end the misery of the darkness and end life to nothingness when they feel they have nothing left to give.

In times of excruciating difficultly, it is often most compelling to regret our lives. The reason why people tend to get drunk or resort to substance abuse in difficult times is the response to want to wash all of that pain away – even if it means one dies in the process. Why? because we buy into the illusion there is nothing more to give, and there is nothing more to gain. We’ve run out of steam, and run out of fuel. We tend to not only regret the past, but regret everything as a whole that brought someone up to this point. We can say “I shouldn’t have done this”, or “they shouldn’t have done that”, “only if I had done things this way”, or “if things worked out this way, then how much better would it be now?”. We tend to speculate, we tend to rewind, and we resent all the chains of events that seemingly have lead us up to that breaking point in our lives. Job wishes that God would rewind everything; that gloom and darkness would claim the day of his birth so that he would not have existed. He feels as though he cannot handle another ounce of pain or suffering, and wishes he would have never experienced it at all.

Most of us wish that there was absolutely no pain in life. In fact, if we had a choice we would choose the least painful road. We hope that life would become peaceful like a silken road that has no bump nor blemish. But the reality of life is that it is almost always difficult, or has its difficulties. How we face those difficulties and look to God as our strength in those turbulent times is what pulls us through. It is a lie to think that having God in our lives will mean that our road of life would be painless. The truth is our time on earth is and can be painful. But Even if it hurts, God’s presence is still with us even in that hour. Don’t look back in anger nor regret your past life. That is more the path to a crooked road, or the method to become even more lost in the jungle of challenges that awaits us ahead in this life on earth. When you feel that you have nothing left to give or nothing left to receive from this life, remember that even if we have run out of strength the Lord never runs out of his for you.