Everything that Job lost was replaceable, at least, almost everything. But what about his children? You can’t replace a human being. Actually, it wasn’t God’s desire to replace anything that Job lost but simply to bless him. So, Job had many more children. But Job would always live with his original loss. An untimely death is always inexplicable, and the experience of bereavement is more painful than any other experience in life. They were with us one day and the next they are gone. There is a painful discordance here: life is deeply and wonderfully sacred, but it is also disturbingly ephemeral. How are we to hold these facts together? Not easily for sure. But there is hope, and this is what we must hold onto. Life does not expire in death, it is transposed. The body may die but the spirit remains alive and conscious and will one day be embodied again. Life is like a stage; we come on, we play our part and then we are taken off. Some of us have long parts some very short. But it is all part of the one purpose. The actors who exit the stage are still alive, they are just not on the stage with us while we are still performing our part. And when we have finished our part, we will join them to celebrate what happened on the stage of this life. God is directing something wonderful but, in the process, we live with the pain of a constant flux of gain and loss. In the midst of this, however, remember that God is directing things.
Reflect on how you’ve seen God direct things in your life in the past.
Read Job 42 again
