I Know My Rescuer Is Alive

Job sat down low,
in the dust and the ash.
He had lost so much.
His children. His health.
And now even his friends had turned their faces away.

They thought Job had done something wrong.
They were so sure of it.
"You must have a secret sin," they said.
"God is only paying you back."

But Job had not.
And nobody believed him.

Do you know that feeling?
When everyone in the room thinks you did the bad thing,
and you didn't,
and there is no one to stand up and say,
"It wasn't him"?

Job felt it.
Lonely as a stone.
Aching for someone, anyone, to take his side.

So from the ash heap,
where not long before he had poured out
every one of his sad words to God,
Job lifted a sore and breaking voice
and said something brave.

"Oh, I wish my words could be written down.
Carved into rock with an iron pen.
Cut so deep they would last forever."

This is what he wanted the whole world to read:

"I know that my Rescuer lives.
I know it.
And at the very last,
he will stand up on the earth.
And even after my skin is gone,
even then,
with my own eyes I will see him.
I myself will see him, and no stranger in my place.
My own eyes will look on the One who is for me."

Job did not have everything figured out.
He did not know why all of it had happened.
He only knew this one thing,
and he held it like a lamp in the dark:

Somewhere, Someone is alive who will stand up for me.
And one day, I will see him.

Job said it like a promise.
And it was a promise.

Long, long after Job sat in the ashes,
the Rescuer he was waiting for came walking on the earth.
His name is Jesus.

Jesus is the One who stands up.
When everyone else turns away,
he turns toward you.
When no one will take your side,
he already has.
He knows what really happened,
every single bit of it.
You will never have to explain yourself to him.

And the thing Job longed for,
to see his Rescuer with his own eyes,
is going to happen.

For Job.
For you.

Jesus is alive right now,
this very minute.
And one day he will stand on the earth again,
and the people who love him
will look right at him
with their own two eyes,
and the waiting will be over.

Job whispered it into the dust
before he ever knew the name.
And every word of it was true.

Your Rescuer is alive.
And you are going to see him.