I’m reading along with the Bible Recap for a chronological Bible reading plan this year, and whenever I get to the book of Job, I normally skim it. I normally think I’m supposed to disregard the foolish advice of Job’s friends, so why bother? But this time, I think carefully about where there’s wisdom in every chapter, especially when Job speaks. What I most notice this morning includes Job’s awareness of God’s power and control over all things. And in the deep despair of Job’s heart, he always shimmers with a bit of hope. Like here in Job 14, he says, “All the days of my hard service I will wait for my renewal to come. You will call and I will answer you.” I just love this idea of [waiting] for my renewal to come. Job knows that God will eventually renew him; he will wait patiently in his suffering. God will eventually call, and Job will answer.
God will call. God will renew.
I also enjoyed a special memory as I read Job today. When I was a little girl, maybe 11 years old, I used to let my Bible fall open anywhere, and I’d see if God had anything to say to me in whatever book happened to be the one open. Normally, the Bible fell open to the middle—so I read a lot of Job and the Psalms! One day, I was particularly sad and discouraged because my church went through a split where the youth group was cut in half (some going to another church, others staying in my church). That day, I read Job 14: 7 and imagined it as a promise for my situation. I even wrote it down in the front of my Bible. Even though, now, I see the right context for this verse (Job is worse off than trees since he find himself without hope), at the time, it spoke to me.
Job says, “For there is hope for a tree, If it is cut down, that it will sprout again, and that its tender shoots will not cease. Though its root may grow old in the earth, and its stump may die in the ground, Yet at the scent of water it will bud and bring forth branches like a plant.” I thought of my situation like a tree that had been cut down (no big youth group), but here, just like a tree, it could grow again. (And rereading today, I thought of growing old and how part of me is beginning to feel like an old stump!)
I also grew to love that expression, “at the scent of water,” as if even the mere scent of water brings life immediately. A mere scent of Jesus, and what’s dead in us begins to spring to life.