Articles
Important Questions - 20
“Shall we indeed accept good from God, and shall we not accept adversity?” (Job 2:10)
This is Job’s response to his wife when she apparently loses her faith in the midst of suffering and tells him to curse God and die. At the end of his trial Job says to God, “I have heard of You by the hearing of the ear” (42:5). In other words, Job has learned of God via the teaching of others and has come to respect Him greatly through that exposure. At the beginning of his trial Job is clear in his thinking that God blessings should be accepted gratefully along with the adversity that He sometimes allows.
Of course, as the trials linger and he is perturbed by the accusations of his visitors, Job moves toward skepticism of God’s handling of his life. And herein lies the challenge for every person of faith: We must maintain our core beliefs about God when life’s burdens relentlessly bear down on us. No life is free of adversity. We must not expect the absence of it but rather seek to build a faith that draws strength from adversity. Easy to say but hard to do in the heat of battle.
