SCRIPTURE: Job 3
OBSERVATION/APPLICATION:
I cannot eat for sighing; my groans pour out like water. What I always feared has happened to me. What I dreaded has come true. I have no peace, no quietness. I have no rest; only trouble comes. [Job 3:24-26]
Job is with his close friends, and now he bursts out in pain and frustration – he wishes he hand never been born.
His pain is so great, his misery so unbearable, he finally gives up on life.
He does not ‘curse God and die’ as his wife suggested, he just wishes that God’s will had been that he never had been born at all.
He is wishing for a different cup, to borrow words from Jesus.
He took Peter and Zebedee’s two sons, James and John, and he became anguished and distressed. He told them, “My soul is crushed with grief to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.” [Matthew 26:37-39]

I see a lot of similarity between Jesus’ anguish and distress and Job’s.
Do we ‘sanitize’ Jesus misery, make it less like Job and more saintly, more sweet and mild (like baby Jesus, ‘no crying He makes’?).
I am sure that part of Jesus’ longing for another cup included a deep sense of wishing there could have been another way, a less painful way.
Unlike Job, Jesus is not a helpless victim of God’s purpose here – Jesus is here because He chose this path.
But it was still very hard, very painful, very frightening – His groans poured out like water too, even like blood [Luke 22:44].

I have never experienced this kind of misery, but I have been with people who have, people who wished they were dead.
For those people, it was not easy to day ‘yet I want Your will to be done, not mine’.
I do not question their faith, how can I if I have never walked those paths before.
But I do take comfort from the fact that Jesus agonized like Job did, that He endured deep suffering and persevered through it.
Job is not a story of sanitized faith, untouched by agony or grief.
Job is very real about his suffering, and I take courage from the fact that he expresses his struggles to God.
Similarly I take comfort from the fact that Jesus struggled, agonized, wept, questioned God.

If you know someone who struggles with depression, or someone that has experienced a terrible tragedy, do not be quick to silence them when they agonize out loud, or even when they question God.
Give them the opportunity to name their struggles, doubts, fears, to express them out loud even if they sound inappropriate.
Look again at the Psalms, and realize that they too contain honest expressions of hope and fear, praise and lament, surrender and defiance.
As someone has said, ‘come to God as you are, not as you ought to be – He knows anyway!’
If you wish you were dead, say so; if you wish you had never been born, say so; If you think God is unfair, say so; If you feel life sucks, say so!
God is big enough (thanks Jill), he can take our honesty.
Surrender everything that is in you to Him, even the dark stuff.
My experience is that when I am in a place like Job where there is no peace, no quietness, no rest, only trouble, that after honestly expressing myself to God, I discover a little peace, a little quietness, a little rest.
By getting it out, it actually loses some of its power.
Try it… Job did… Jesus did!

PRAYER:
Lord, right now I do not have any dark or hard feelings that I need to express. Instead I am kind of ‘blah’. But that is what I am, so that is how I come. As I express myself honestly to You, grant me peace, quietness and rest.