The rain falls on everyone, saints and sinners alike.
We’ve heard that. Its truth is inescapable. We experience its reality every day. We’re headed to our son’s ball game, and we pray for sunny skies. As we back out of the drive, our neighbor is watering her thirsty flowers, hoping beyond hope for rain.
Yet, the truth is that if our neighbor gets her rain, we’ll have to postpone our son’s game.
Bring it closer to home. We’re cutting it close on the way to work, and we pray for every light to remain green. We don’t consider the people on the intersecting streets. We just rant and rave at God when we’re caught in the press, and we wind up late yet again.
Job 6:5 asks:
“Does the wild donkey bray when he has grass, or the ox low over his fodder?”
Job was struggling with his sorrow. He had lost everything he thought was important to him. When his friends tell him his troubles are for his good, Job can’t take the rebuke. He feels he has reason to complain, and reason to expect God to respond.
Yet, the sun still lighted the sky. The grasses still brought forth grains. Water flowed across the earth. There was no good thing that God was not doing for people all across the land, even in the moment of Job’s distress.
The real issue was that Job had become a broken vessel, and God’s goodness seemed to slip through his fingers like wine through a broken pot. No matter how much God did for the rest of the world, all Job knew was his loss.
The rain falls on everyone, saints and sinners alike. God’s blessings are always out there. God wants to do good things for his creation.
Sometimes, though, we’re not in a position to appreciate it. Birdsong on a spring morning becomes an affront, and the finest drink sours on our tongue. We are like Job, a broken vessel, unable to find satisfaction in what is in our hands.
What turned Job around? He learned that his satisfaction didn’t come in himself or in what he possessed. It came in the person of God, to be manifested one day in the birth of Christ who would die on the cross.
When we see Jesus as our source, we’ll find the blessings of God in everything we do. If we lose everything else, we’ll still have him, and we’ll never live in devastation or want.
We read of Job’s turning point in Job 42:10:
“And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”
Do we want to be restored? Let’s take Job’s lesson to heart. We have to place others above ourselves so that God will see us as worthy.
It’s not all about us. It’s all about God’s will for us. That’s all the difference in the world.
Copyright © 2015 MyChurchNotes.net
Originally Published 10-31-15