Blessed Like Job
“Blessed are those who trust in the Lord and have made the Lord their hope and confidence. They will be like a tree, planted by the riverbank with roots that reach deep into the water. Such trees are not bothered by the heat or worried by long months of drought. Their leaves stay green and they go right on producing delicious fruit.” Jeremiah 17:7-8
It’s been a life verse for me since my early 30’s. I was drawn to it in part because being a highly sensitive person my life had felt like the roller-coaster ride from hell. I always felt so unstable - kicked around by every circumstance and careless word or action of fellow humans. This verse gave me hope that there was a thriving instead of simply surviving way to live. It marks the beginning of my conscious journey to make Him my number one priority. I had no idea then that there would be layer after layer of exposed idolatries and loves that vied for My focused attention.
It sounds simple enough: make Him your hope and confidence - your ONLY hope and confidence. In the day to day though, believing He will be enough that way is scarier than at first glance. Letting go of everything you think you want and need in order to be able to grab on with both hands to the One Thing your knower knows you need? It’s frightening. What if you’re wrong? What if you let go of striving for perfection and control in your image, your relationships, your career, your assets, your fill-in-the-blank, and He doesn’t come through for you? It rattles your faith. It exposes your doubts and your fears.
That’s why I’ve come to believe that recipients of severe mercies are the blessed ones. Job was that kind of blessed one. Don’t get me wrong, I’m fully aware that Nobody stands in the “Blessed Like Job” line and jumps up and down screaming “Pick Me! Pick Me!”. Nobody. And yet those who aren’t in that line, when having tough decisions to make, more often than not follow the pattern of the discouraged, rich young ruler who walked away from Jesus because he couldn’t pry his fingers off from what he loved. Job’s fingers were pried off for him. In that place, his options were to curse God and die, or trust in the goodness of God in the middle of his suffering.
Few of us suffer the extremity of loss that Job did, but most of us have at least places of severe loss or disappointment in our lives. It’s in those places that we have the rare opportunity of blessedly few choices: curse God, or place our hope in His goodness to redeem and bring beauty from our ashes. “They will be like a tree planted by the riverbank, with roots that reach deep into the water.” I can almost taste the fruit.
Lord, change how we see. May we choose to hope in you, your goodness, your promises —even in the places where there appears to be no hope, no redemption, no way. You are the God of the impossible and we want to trust you for impossible in EVERY place, but especially in the places where we don’t have a better option. Thank you for “blessing” us in those places with an opportunity to experience firsthand your goodness and to grow our faith muscles.
