The Book of Job

I was talking to a friend the other day. She listed off the various things that have happened to me in the last few months-- being hit by a massive Typhpon, landslides isolating my village, getting deathly sick, running out of food, having no connection to the outside world, forsaken by a lover, being stripped of all my wealth, etc. It reminded me of the Book of Job in the Bible-- you know the one where God decides to test his faithful servant Job by besetting him with every possible calamity.

So the other day I took the afternoon off work, picked up the Gideon Bible in my hotel, and read the Book of Job. Reading out loud some of the passages where Job speaks, it was as if I was speaking what I had to say.

So anyway, I just give up.

I think that's gotta be one of the messages of the book. If God can be so frivolous and do all that nasty stuff to his best servant, and no matter what Job says or does, he can't make it better-- then what's the point in trying anyway?

I don't mean give up, give up. Job may have wished he was dead, but he kept going. I mean, I am just going to give up fighting the current.

The current took Job from being a wealthy man, to a diseased and impoverished nobody who's most trusted and loved friends forsook him with judgement, then back again to his former stature.

Job had a great life until the demise of his success. I've had the most amazing life ever, almost like multiple lives within a life. I've been like a father with a log cabin house in the countryside with a a wife and two kids. I've lived amazing lives in central America, the middle east, Europe, a loft in Paris and heck I've even been a farmer in Iceland. Now I am a missionary embedded in a remote Philipino village.

That's where the current has taken me.

So rather than resist, I am going to just let it be. And in the meanwhile be as massively generous as I can be with what I happen to have.

So, whatever. Now that I think of it, now that I release the dire grip on my expectations and wants, I actually have lots to give still, and many people I can bless.

So, I am just going to keep going with that current.