Job Says the Sad Words Out Loud

News traveled slowly in those days, on foot and by camel,
but at last three of Job's friends heard
what had happened to him.
His seven sons and three daughters were dead.
Sores covered him from the soles of his feet to the top of his head,
and he sat in the ashes,
scraping them with a broken piece of pot.

His friends came from far away to comfort him,
Eliphaz and Bildad and Zophar.
When they saw him in the distance,
they did not even know him.
They wept loudly and tore their robes
and threw dust up over their heads.
(That was how people in those days showed a broken heart.)
Then they sat beside him in the dirt.
For seven days and seven nights,
not one of them said a word.

When the seven days were over, Job opened his mouth.

"Wipe out the day I was born!" he cried.
"Let that day turn black.
Let God up above never look for it.
Why didn't I die the day I was born?
Then I would be lying down and resting now.
Why does God give light to a man who hurts this much?
I sigh instead of eating.
My groans pour out like water.
I have no rest. Only trouble."

These are some of the saddest words in the Bible,
and God kept them, written down in his book.

Then Eliphaz spoke up:
"Think, Job! When was a good man ever wiped out like this?"
Job said his friend's advice was like the white of an egg with no salt,
and he could not stand to touch it.
(Anyone who has eaten a plain boiled egg white knows Job was being polite.)

Then Job turned from his friends
and spoke straight to God.

"When I lie down, I say, 'When will it be morning?'
But the night drags on,
and I toss and turn till dawn.
My days fly faster than a weaver's shuttle,
and they run out with no hope.
Remember, God, my life is only a breath.
So I will not keep my mouth shut.
Am I the sea, or some sea monster,
that you have to set a guard over me?
Won't you look away from me
even long enough for me to swallow?"

(A weaver's shuttle zips back and forth through the threads
faster than your eyes can follow.)

Job did not hide his sad words from God.
He said them right to God's face,
and God let him.
(One day God would answer Job out of a whirlwind.
But not yet.)

So Job kept calling up into the dark.
He could not see God,
and none of his friends knew how it felt.

God's people kept Job's words.
For hundreds of years they sang sad songs like them in the temple,
asking God "Why?" and "How long?" and waiting.

Then a man named Lazarus died in the village of Bethany,
and his friend came four days too late.
Lazarus's sister Mary fell down at his feet.
"Lord, if you had been here," she cried,
"my brother would not have died!"
Her friend did not scold her.
He did not make a speech.
He saw her crying, and he cried too.
Not long after, that friend was nailed to a cross,
and he went down into the dark where Job sat, and died.

He was God's own Son,
and on the third day his Father raised him to life.
None of Job's friends had known how it felt.
Jesus knew.