Strength in Adversity: Lessons from the Book of Job

No one is spared suffering - no one! To be human is to suffer. Grief, pain, injustice, disappointment - life serves these up in portions great and small. We can try to deny this reality or escape from it through endless diversions. We can even fall into despair, the seemingly rational response of a caring person when faced with a cold, uncaring world. Denial, diversion and despair. Is that all there is? Is there another way? A way that is honest about suffering and yet offers hope rather than despair, victory rather than victimhood? About twenty-five hundred years ago, a literary masterpiece came on the scene. Known as The Book of Job, a wisdom book in the Hebrew Bible and Christian Old Testament, it has stirred serious thinkers and honest seekers for generations. To be sure, the grim story of a righteous man who loses everything - wealth, health and even his children - raises almost as many questions as it answers. But that is to its credit! The Book of Job never stoops to simplistic answers to hard questions. Instead, this narrative openly wrestles with some of life's most difficult moral and spiritual puzzles, including how to reconcile a loving, just God with a suffering and unjust world. Powerful and poetic, it points a way through life's most difficult challenges - the setbacks and sufferings that inevitably come our way. This is the way of Strength in Adversity, a way of honest hope and courageous faith.