Hope in the Midst of Pain

Should not your piety be your confidence and 

your blameless ways your hope

                                                                  –Job 4.6

One of Job’s friends, a fellow named Eliphaz, utters these words, presumably intended as comfort to Job in his distress.

Job’s children have died.  His wealth is gone.  His health has evaporated before his eyes.  There is no reason for any of this that has anything to do with anything Job did or did not do.  In other words, this is not some sort of divine punishment against Job.  If anything, these horrors are visited on Job because he is so righteous, as some sort of test of the limits of human love for God.

The implications of such a view are for another time.

What draws me today is this line from Eliphaz about hope.  

A FB friend today wrote about his own anguish and pain (he suffers chronic debilitating illness and is plagued by virtually constant physical pain).

One of his friends offered ‘comfort’ in the form of scripture on the source of hope and the rewards of righteous living.

Doesn’t this miss the point today as much as it did back on the ash heap at Job’s place?

Our own goodness, such as it is, is no source of hope or confidence.  Our goodness is our response to God’s own goodness, no more, no less.  It is offered to God for its own sake, without expectation of reward or protection from harm.  

And innocence is no protection from harm.

And most of all, in the midst of our pain, our real, cry-out-in-the-dark hurting, the hope we seek is that the pain will stop.  That’s all.  

Whether the pain has a purpose or whether we can glean some learning from it is for the time after the pain has passed.

In the midst of the pain, the consuming fire brings us down to primordial basics: it won’t last forever; you are not alone; I am here; make it stop! 

If Job’s blameless ways were the source of his hope, Job would have had no reason to suffer in the first place.  

The fact is that suffering is the one universal of being human, whether of the good and upright stripe or the not-so-much school.

So for those suffering today . . . chances are it’s not your fault . . . the pain really will pass . . . and you are not alone . . . not now, not ever. . . and sometimes all you can do is ride it out, feel the pain, and cling to whatever glimmer of hope you can find.  

May your persevering not be in vain.

May your pain be eased.

And in its midst, may the kind hand of God reach out and hold you up.