Day 40 – Chapter 42

“Then answered the Lord and said, ‘I know that You can do all things, and that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted. Who is this that hides counsel without knowledge? Therefore I have declared that which I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know. Hear, now, and I will speak; I will ask You, and You will instruct me. I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear; but now my eye sees You; therefore I retract, and I repent in dust and ashes” (42:1-6).

We come now to the end of Job’s odyssey. He has suffered. He has complained. He has questioned God. But now he has been humbled, to which the appropriate response is to confess and repent. He is able to do so because before his experiences his knowledge was entirely according to what he had heard, but now having seen what he has heard has become confident faith because of what he has seen.

There is a marked difference between knowledge based upon hearsay and knowledge forged through experience. That is not to say that one cannot walk in confident faith having only heard. Jesus said to His disciples in His encounter with Thomas after the resurrection, “Because you have seen Me, have you believed? Blessed are they who did not see, and yet believed” (John 20:29). But it is the acknowledgement that sometimes what is only known in theory does not truly resonate until it becomes tested through practice.

Job went through suffering no human being before him or after him ever suffered. On the surface it would appear that the only purpose was to prove a point, and yet the lessons he learned still speak. We are not our own. Ultimately we belong to God and sovereignly He can do with us whatever He chooses. Though we are not automatons programmed to a particular end we are free to choose our path, that which God has ordained or that of our won choosing. Even in his inappropriate questioning of God, Job chose the path of trust in God. Gospel recording artist and composer Richard Smallwood composed a powerful song the lyrics of which say in part, “I will be with you, if you only will trust me. I’ll never leave you, if only you will trust me. I’ll fight your battle, if only you will trust me. I am that I am. I have all power. I will deliver, if you will only trust Me.” Like Job, I choose to trust God.

Jesus, my desire is to trust You more completely. As I read the testimony of all those who have gone before me, increase my faith. Allow the example of their lives to strengthen my resolve and bolster my will. Lord, haste the day when my faith will become sight and I am able to declare and decree, “It is well with my soul.”