SHOCK WAVES by Nancy L. Harry
I can’t believe what happened. It’s such a shock.…
Some things that happen in our lives leave us stunned. It seems engraved in our minds forever. We re-live the same scene over and over, sometimes for years, as if that will make it go away or seem less painful.
When we study the story in the Bible about Job, the talk is about what Job went through. I never heard anyone mention how it affected his wife. It was her children too that died. She was a mother that lost all seven of her children. She was the wife of a man who was the wealthiest in the land. When disaster stripped him of his prosperity, she went from living in luxury to what she thought was going to be a life of extreme poverty. On top of all that, her husband, who seemed to her to be the only thing she had left, fell sick and went off somewhere by himself with his body covered in boils and in extreme pain.
She had to be filled with overwhelming sorrow, in shock, devastated, and racked with the deepest emotional pain a mother could endure having lost all her children. She fell victim to anger and bitterness, to the point she finally told her husband to curse God and die. Job was going through the same shock, plus enduring the pain of his body’s affliction. He handled what was happening to them a little differently. He refused to turn against God. He didn’t let bitterness settle in, but he did want answers from God. And he kept after Him, until he received those answers. In the end, God blessed Job for his faithfulness to Him, and restored everything that had been taken from him. And, because of God’s love, mercy and grace, those blessings became his wife’s, as well.
We also have the example of Joseph. He was the youngest of ten brothers. Do you think he didn’t look up to his older brothers, saying to himself, someday I’ll going to be like this one, or I’m going to be like that one? Yet, because of his youth, he foolishly shared dreams with them that indicated that someday he would rule over them. His bothers must have thought how foolish and arrogant Joseph was to think such a thing could actually happen. Why, he was the baby of the family. Who did he think he was? The older brothers knew their father also favored this young one. So, most likely jealousy became an issue and played a part in what was about to transpire. I’m sure it was a shock to Joseph, when the brothers he admired and looked up to, turned against him and threw him into an animal pit to die. He might have had a small glimmer of hope, when they began to pull him out. But instead of freeing him, they sold him to some foreigners passing by. Later in this foreign land, he ended up being lied about and thrown into a dungeon as a result. Here he remained imprisoned for years.
Yet, Joseph was never forgotten by God. The time finally came. He was released from prison to stand before the Pharaoh of this foreign country. The Pharaoh had been struggling with understanding a vivid dream he had. No one in his court could explain it to him. But God gave the interpretation to Joseph, causing him to receive favor in the eyes of this great leader. The time for him to fulfill his God-ordained purpose arrived. A seven-year drought was about to come. The Pharaoh placed Joseph second-in-command and put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt. Then, God used him to save not only the land of Egypt, but the family that had betrayed him as well, during a drought that could have wiped out both.
I’m relating all this to say: work past the shock. Work past the hurt and the pain. Never lose your hope or faith in God. He will often use those very difficult times to get you where He wants you to be. I wondered, "Couldn’t He find an easier way?" Of course He could and probably would have. But He also takes advantage of what transpires in our lives to His advantage and to our advantage.
Romans 8:28 says: “And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” I call this particular scripture the one where God takes the lemons in our lives and makes lemonade out of them. When lemons are thrown at you, hold on tight to the Lord. Stay close to him. He will never leave you. He will go with you through, around, under, over and out of those hard situations that we sometimes find ourselves in.
P.S. And never forget to be grateful and thankful for the lemonade.
“The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease. Great is his faithful-ness; his mercies begin afresh each morning. I say to myself, “The Lord is my inheritance; therefore, I will hope in him!” Lamentations 3:22-24 NLT
Put everything in God’s hand,
then God’s hand will be in everything.