When One Despairs of Even Life Itself

Scripture Verses that caught my attention today: Job 3:1-3 After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. 2 Job said:
3 “Let the day perish in which I was born,
and the night that said,
‘A man-child is conceived.’

Observation: Job was in a most difficult time in his life and he despaired of even life itself.

Application: Recently there was a person in the community who took his own life. Regrettably, it happens. Since this particular person was a teacher and a coach, you can imagine the ripple affect.

A few days later we addressed the topic with our youth and some parents and colleagues at church, especially those most directly affected. We had frank and honest discussion, including my own admission that there has been a time or two in my own life when I’ve briefly considered such things. I’m thankful that I never gave it truly serious consideration, but just the thought about it is scary in its own right, both to oneself and to others.

I don’t think that I or others are necessarily alone in this way. The Bible reveals that Moses once asked that he might die rather than go about the Lord’s business. And in chapter 3 of Job it’s clear that he’s not all too keen on the life experience either. Sometimes to go on living is really tough. It almost makes you wonder why, according to the Bible, that people who have died are sometimes brought back to life. Need they experience human misery again? Job laments ever being born in the first place. From the looks of the passage above it appears he might actually be more inclined to support planned parenthood than the right to life (though I have no interest in opening up that debate here).

What’s far more important, I think, is that sometimes people have a need to simply express how they truly feel at a particular time in their life without having to deal with judgment or condemnation or even well-intended but still patronizing little pats on the back to the affect of “now, now, the sun will come out tomorrow.” The sun may indeed come out tomorrow, but first one needs to get through today—starting with the ability to call it as dark as he or she sees it. If only someone would just listen.

That was part of the problem with Job’s “friends.” Try as they might, their method of “help” was to try to prove him wrong, thus piling even more emotional garbage on his plate.

Of course, hindsight’s pretty good and, had I been there, I might have piled it on pretty thick too.

Thankfully in Christ we have the most tangible proof of all that, regardless of its intense difficulty in some cases (which Jesus openly acknowledged AND experienced) life is still worth living…and with his help, living again.

Prayer: Lord, be with all who experience life’s difficulties at any time. Allow us to be absorbers of true feelings and, at the same time, conveyors of true love—the kind that is only found in you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

(Readings today included: Job 3 and 4 and Acts 8-9.)