If today you lost your job, lost your stocks, bonds, IRA. If today you found out you had a terminal illness or one of your children. If today your world came crashing down around your ears and you felt like God had abandoned you and you were ready to flip the Church the bird, could you stop at that point and look to the heavens and speak the words Job spoke; "though He slay me yet I will trust Him,"
It may do us well to stop at some point this week, at this time of remembering the Passion of our Christ Jesus and ponder on how Jesus was feeling. What was He going through. To ponder it as a bystander, a disciple who is not of the twelve but a follower just the same keeping near enough to hear His voice and the teachings He gives to the twelve. Think in your mind's eye to see him slapped around and accused by the Sanhedrin of being a blasphemer and mocker of our Holy God. He, like Job, was stripped away of everything of worth, His family members stayed at a distance. He was without a defender, without a lawyer, He was as silent as a lamb for our sake. He was beaten, tortured, humiliated and spat upon. He was made to suffer what none of us could dare imagine.
It could very well have been that Job's words were rolling around in the mind of Christ Jesus, "though He slay me yet I will trust Him," if not the exact words it is the sentiment that they express. Jesus had to loose it all for us, He was stripped of his clothing, His image to the followers and new converts, He was made to suffer our punishment for our transgressions. It is not so much that we bring ourselves to believe that we could do the same, to stand with shakey wabbely knees and endure the passion that Christ Jesus suffered for that was for Him alone for all the world. Rather, we are to take it to our own self, our own existence and our own family. It is the foundation to which our faith must finally come to rest if it is to last. Our faith will be tested and stretched not because God is trying to find us unworthy of His goodness and blessings no. It is because at some point in our life we may...may...find ourselves in a spot in life where we too will be stripped of our family or security. We may be told we have only months to live or told that about one of our children. It will not be true but your mind may turn to the words of Job and you may find yourself believing God is slaying you and your heart is breaking into pieces, will you still trust Him. It is not an answer to be given flippantly or quickly, it is an answer that will well up inside you and overflow out over your lips if and when the time comes. The main point is that we must enable our spirit and our heart to love God in all ways and through our good times and in bad. That if God stopped listening to our prayers today and we loose everything tomorrow, can we live out the rest of our days praising Him for allowing us to know Him and His Son? Will we find comfort in remembering what it was like to feel His loving warmth envelop us when we called out to Him and hold to that through all waves of upset or turmoil that come our way? You see my friend, it was bleak on the path that Jesus chose and accepted. The scripture states that at one point he turned toward Jerusalem and set His face like flint, knowing what He was walking into. Yes, God has blessings for us and piles of them as tall as hills awaiting us in God's Heavenly Kingdom but that is not here and it's not now. Now, at this point, we live in a realm where light is mixed with dark, good with bad and healing with sickness and yet it is all God for nothing exists without His having created it, nothing outside of God exists.
While we get ready to celebrate with music and dancing focusing on Easter morning and the reality that a dead man got up and walked out of that tomb. While we thank God for His unending love and compassion for His creation we may first ask ourselves the question on Good Friday, "if He were to slay me, would I yet trust Him?"
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