Job 6:8-10; 9:14-20,30-31, Dealing with Grief (1)

Eliphaz made the observation, “Yet man is born to trouble as surely as sparks fly upward” (Job 5:7).  Job agreed: “Man who is born of woman is of few days and full of trouble” (Job 14:1).  Life frequently brings trouble, and with it, GRIEF.  We define “grief” as emotional suffering caused by being deprived of something.

C. S. Lewis married late in life, to a wonderful Christian woman he truly loved.  In a short time God took her.  Out of the situation Lewis wrote A Grief Observed.

I am of a similar age as Joni Eareckson Tada.  In 1967 a diving accident left her a quadriplegic.  Her life and ministry has been an encouragement in the matter of dealing with grief.

Job was a righteous man, equated in Scripture with Noah and Daniel in terms of the righteous quality of his life (Ezek. 14:13-14).  God’s own evaluation of Job was that he was a blameless man (Job 1:8).  But in one day, Job learned of the loss of his cattle, donkeys, sheep, camels and children.  Shortly after that, he became afflicted with painful sores on his body.  This righteous man, Job, experienced many of the same issues of grief that people generally might experience.

·       The desire to die, Job 6:8-10.  This is not unusual in Scripture: Jeremiah and Elijah also had this experience.

·       Resentment against God (bitterness), Job 7:17-21.

·       A sense of doom (resignation), Job 9:14-20,30-31.  It seemed like God was not listening and that there would never be a change in his lot in life.

·       Feelings of rejection, Job 19:13-20.  Often, people who are terminally ill will feel like people are trying to avoid them, when, in fact, they often are.  C. S. Lewis, speaking of his wife’s sons (by her first marriage) said,

I cannot speak to the children about her.  The moment I try there appears on their faces neither grief, nor love, nor fear, nor pity, but the most fatal of all non-conductors: embarrassment.  They look as if I were committing an indecency.  They are longing for me to stop.  I felt the same after my own mother’s death when my father mentioned her.

·       Growing impatience, Job. 24:1-4,12.  I have a definition of patience I picked up somewhere along the way: “accepting a difficult situation from God without giving Him a deadline to remove it.”  If that’s close, then we could say that Job struggled with patience.

Now our question is, “How can we encourage one another in grieving situations?”  Using the Book of Job, we will seek God’s answer to this question.  What we will find is that God Himself is the answer to our question.