Job

[Rob McNair]

I just finished Job. There is a lot to chew on here but I think overall the message I take away is this: if we believe God is good and if we believe that God loves us, then the logical conclusion is that everything that happens to us in this world happens for our own good. Only God has the power to take pain and suffering and transform it into strength and power. And we must seek his counsel to understand. As Job confesses at the end, after having lamented at great length about God being malicious toward him: "Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand, things too wonderful for me, which I did not know" (Job 42:3).

Now that is easy for me to say because my experiences with pain and suffering pale in comparison to that of people who have experienced unimaginable trauma. But think of all those great people we find inspiring: Jesus (of course), MLK, Ghandi, Mother Teresa, Anne Frank, etc. and these people's names would be meaningless without the presence of pain and suffering in their life. The reason we look to them is because their strength and power was fueled by pain and suffering. As Victor Frankl said, "What is to give light must endure burning."

[Rob McNair]

Yeah, Elihu kind of appears late on the scene and is younger than the other guys so i am not sure where he comes from. At the beginning it only talks about Job's three friends coming to be with him: Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Another thing to consider is that in 2:13 it states, "They [the three friends] sat with him [Job] on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his suffering was very great." I think their dedication to Job is often overlooked. I mean these guys sat in silence with him for 7 days!

[Amber Kalina]

Do you think they talked amongst themselves, or was it kind of a supportive/awkward silence?

That would be hard, though. to just sit there and watch their friend suffer. Then they try to help, but don't do a very good job. I wonder if maybe Elihu was there too, meditating and contemplating on what he could tell Job before the convo even started.

How do you think it was when Job first started talking, about how he was innocent and how God was unjustly punishing him and how he was willing to stare God in the face to proclaim that he didn't do anything wrong. I would be agaust!