The Patience of Job

This past month I preached from the book of Job twice in a row.  I've never done that before--even though it shows up in the lectionary (a three-year cycle of scripture readings for Sunday worship) on a regular basis.  Once was always enough.  It is, in so many ways, such a distressing story!  Who wants to have to wrestle with it any more than necessary?  Yet somehow, this year, it seemed to invite a closer examination.  Maybe it is the a sign of these trying times--I don't know.

Whatever the case, I am newly impressed by Job's tenacity.  He loses his home, his wealth, his family, even his health, yet he soldiers on.  We routinely speak of someone having "the patience of Job," but when you look at the text closely, you realize that doesn't mean he's quiet or uncomplaining.  What it does mean is that he stays in the fight.  He doesn't give up on God, he doesn't even really give up on himself.  As they used to say about watches, "he takes a licking and keeps on ticking!"

Job is said to be a folktale.  And I would agree with that scholarly assessment.  But not because it is unbelievable.  In fact, I know a few Jobs.  I know some men and women who have faced a multitude of challenges and losses in life and yet who have kept moving on, one step, one day, at a time.  And even as Job inspires me to persevere in the midst of strife and difficulty, so too these Job-like folks who I know personally.  The way they handle life gives me hope.

This morning we received a phone call from my sister-in-law, whose thirty-eight year old developmentally-disabled daughter died overnight.  When she was first diagnosed the doctors said she wouldn't live past puberty.  As my wife said, "She sure made fools of those doctors!"  She was non-verbal, and had a host of medical issues.  But my sister-in-law, and her late husband, refused to give up on her.  And though they faced challenge after challenge as they companioned her through life, they never gave up.  Never. 

My late brother-in-law often compared himself to Job--and he could complain with the best of them.  But he and my sister-in-law refused to abandon their daughter.  Together they taught so many of us what it means to really love.  And unlike the Book of Job, that is no folktale.  Rather, it is a profound truth born out of reality.