The Day the Sky Fell on Job

There was a man named Job. And oh, how God loved him.

Job lived long, long ago, in the days of the fathers, in a faraway land called Uz, a little way off the road our story has been walking. Job loved God right back. He had a big family and a big farm. Sheep on the green hills. Camels in long, slow lines. Sons and daughters laughing around his table. When Job woke up in the morning, he had every reason to smile.

Job was good, too. Not the perfect kind of good, but the kind that grows in a heart that trusts God all the way down.

And then, in one terrible day, the sky fell on Job.

A runner came, out of breath. "Job! Your oxen are gone." Before he finished, another runner came. "Job! Fire fell from heaven. Your sheep are gone." Before that one finished, another. "Job! Raiders took your camels." And then the last runner came, and he could hardly get the words out. "Job. The wind. The house. Your children."

All of it, gone, in a single afternoon. One moment everything was warm and full and his. The next moment, empty. The bottom had dropped out of Job's world.

Job stood up. His knees were shaking. He tore his coat, the way people did when their hearts were breaking. And then Job did something surprising. He fell down on the ground, and there in the dust, he worshiped.

"I came into this world with nothing," Job said softly. "I will leave it with nothing too. The Lord gives. The Lord takes away. And still, I will bless his name."

Long before, Abraham had climbed a mountain trusting God with the son he loved. Job trusted like that now, with empty hands. He didn't understand. He got no answers. There was no voice from the sky to tell him why. There was only the dark, and the ache, and a good man on his knees, holding on to God when there was nothing left to hold.

Maybe you know that feeling, when something you loved is suddenly gone, and nobody can explain it, and you feel afraid and lonely and don't know why this is happening to you.

God was not angry with Job for hurting. And God was not far away, either, though it surely felt that way. God's heart was bent close over Job in the dark, closer than Job could feel. He had not forgotten Job's name. Not for one second. He never does.

Long, long after Job, there was another good man. The only one who was ever perfectly good. And one terrible day, everything was taken from him too. His friends. His clothes. His breath. Even the warm, near feeling of his Father.

And Jesus, in the dark, with nothing left to hold, still trusted his Father. He held on when he could not feel a single answer. He worshiped through the worst night the world has ever known.

So when the sky falls on you, and someday it will, you are not alone in the dark. Someone has gone all the way down into it ahead of you. And he came back up, with the morning in his hands.