Dispatch Two Hundred Eighty

JOB 1:1; 2:1-10

1 ¹ There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil.

2 ¹ One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. ² The Lord said to Satan, “Where have you come from?” Satan answered the Lord, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.” ³ The Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil. He still persists in his integrity, although you incited me against him, to destroy him for no reason.” ⁴ Then Satan answered the Lord, “Skin for skin! All that people have they will give to save their lives. ⁵ But stretch out your hand now and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse you to your face.” ⁶ The Lord said to Satan, “Very well, he is in your power; only spare his life.”

⁷ So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord, and inflicted loathsome sores on Job from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. ⁸ Job took a potsherd with which to scrape himself, and sat among the ashes.

⁹ Then his wife said to him, “Do you still persist in your integrity? Curse God, and die.” ¹⁰ But he said to her, “You speak as any foolish woman would speak. Shall we receive the good at the hand of God, and not receive the bad?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

Our conclusion in a previous Dispatch may have sounded fatalistic and inherently hopeless, but there is real wisdom in the principle of accepting life as it comes. This doesn’t mean that we must simply resign ourselves to the negative experiences of adversity, hardship, loss, and mortality as they come upon us.

If we should look more closely at our own tendencies and habits when suffering visits us, we might notice how often we fall alternately into denial (“It’s really nothing”) or inflation (“There’s no use going on”), without truly engaging the struggle that is uniquely ours. To accept life as it comes is to take the mixture of good and evil with full responsibility – not for having caused it, perhaps, but responsible for what we will do with it.

Job didn’t do anything to deserve his misfortune (the premise of the story), and yet he refused to either dismiss it as unreal or resist it as unfair. The great climax towards the end of the book, when God addresses Job directly out of the whirlwind of his disorienting experience, is prepared for already here at the beginning, where Job accepts his suffering as his own.