Job 29:2,3

"... Oh, that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me; when his lamp shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness ..."

The patience of Job is proverbial. Anyone with the smallest awareness of the Bible is aware of his awful suffering. There are divine mysteries in that book that, when considered, should bring us to awe of God.

But dear Job has no idea of what is going on around him. The thing that he sees is the great loss that he has suffered. In a few pplaces in the book hHe expresses wonderful insight into God and His character. But it is generally believed that the events in the book of Job predate Moses, making it the oldest book in the Bible. We marvel at the Word, but Job had none of it. And in his apparent ignorance he does make some wonderful statements.

But when one finds himself in the kind of loss and sorrow that Job has, it is very easy to take ones eyes off of the Almighty, and put them on the circumstances. In the above verses Job expresses a desire to again be led by God, to have the comfort of his presence. We as spectators to the events know of God’s hand in them. But Job does not.

And so he first laments that he wishes things were as before, when God preserved him. Turning back to Job 2:3-6 we read, "And the LORD said unto Satan, Hast thou considered my servant Job, that there is none like him in the earth, a perfect and an upright man, one that feareth God, and escheweth evil? And still he holdeth fast his integrity, although thou movedst me against him, to destroy him without cause. And Satan answered the LORD, and said, Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life. But put forth thine hand now, and touch his bone and his flesh, and he will curse thee to thy face. And the LORD said unto Satan, Behold, he is in thine hand; but save his life." These conversations between God and satan are a mystery. Why would God even allow the enemy into His presence? But see what God has said. He told satan to save Job’s life. Satan was asking permission to take Job’s health from him. God told him to save Job’s life.

From the perspective of the reader, Job’s lament, recorded in Job 29, is ungrounded because the enemy wanted to take his life, but God did not allow it. God had, indeed, preserved him. In 1 Corinthians 10:13 scripture tells us that we will not be tempted above that we are able. God is not in the business of pushing us beyond the breaking point. He remembers our frame, that we are dust. While Job may hove thought that he was out of the hand of God, that God was no longer preserving him, the facts show otherwise. So we, too, being in the hand of God Almighty are preserved by Him, no matter the depth we suffer. Corrie Ten Boom wrote of her days in a concentration camp in Germany during World War 2. She told how she found that even the lice were a blessing because they kept the guards out of the barracks. Corrie also speaks of her sister’s faith in the LORD. Her sister is quoted as saying, "There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still." Looking at Job we see the truth of that.

Job goes on to speak of, "... when his (God’s) lamp shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through darkness ..." It seems that Job’s sense of no longer being preserved by God led him to conclude that he was also no longer being led by God in the darkness. His lament indicates that he missed God’s light that led him in darkness before. We know nothing else of Job’s life except that which is recorded in this book of the Bible. It cannot be said what other darkness he had known. Perhaps, though, it can be said that he certainly had no other darkness as dark as this which he was suffering at this time in his life. By the end of the book Job discovers that even this darkest of darkness was also lit by God’s lamp. God did not forsake him. God had not left him to do go through this on his own. Job walked also through this darkness, and found ultimately that God’s light was in fact still there.

What do we know of darkness? What do we know of God’s preservation? In spite of the words recorded above, words spoken by Job, he discovered later that God was still God, and that His care had not disappeared, no matter how it seemed. When we look at these events in Job’s life, preserved over the centuries in the Bible, it is as plain as day that God had neither forsaken nor forgotten Job. As noted before, Job had no such stories written for his benefit.

Have we ever lamented as did Job? Have we ever concluded that God was no longer preserving us, that He was no longer lighting our path in the darkness? Shame on us! The way God treated Job, His constant care and preservation, is how He will deal with us. And we have the story of Job as a foundation for this claim! God never changes.

God does remember our frame, that it is dust. And so in His faithfulness He had the story of Job written by some unknown individual, from a time in world history that cannot be identified, to remind us that He is faithful to them that are His. There is no extremity of trial that is beyond His preserving us. There is no darkness that is too great for His illumination. There is no pit so deep that He is not deeper still.

HJK