Job 17:7

"Handfuls of Purpose"

For All Gleaners

"Mine eye also is dim by reason of sorrow, and all my members are as a shadow." Job 17:7

The children of God need not hide the extremities to which they are put. Whilst in one sense they are called upon to make the best of their circumstances, in another they are expected to realise all the discipline through which God is causing them to pass. In any book invented for the purpose of deceiving the world, expressions of this kind would not have been found, for they are enough to turn away the reader from faith in the God who could permit such heavy distresses to fall upon his chosen children. In the Bible, however, the utmost frankness is used in describing the reality of life. Christ said, If any man will come after me, let him take up his cross. Christianity means crucifixion. Looking upon the sufferer in the text, who would say, Let me also be as Job is: let me believe in God; let me follow him in all the travail and sorrow of his life; for surely the God who permits such chastisement is merciful and tender in spirit? No man could make any such speech. Looked at, as he sits in sorrow and in dust and ashes, uncrowned, desolated, and abhorred, Job is rather calculated to turn men away from God, than to allure them to him. Christians have suffered more than any other men have ever endured. The higher the life the more susceptible is feeling: the nearer we are to God the more wicked does every sin appear to be. It is not to be supposed that when a man lives and moves and has his being in God that he is exempt from loss, or pain, or want: but the case is not confined within the limits of such experience; the error which we are always tempted to commit is the error of supposing that we see everything, and grasp the whole case of life in all the variety of its detail. We forget such comforting words as "What thou knowest not now, thou shall know hereafter;" "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid;" "Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations." that is, trials or tests of character. When the eye is dim by reason of sorrow, the eye of the soul is often made brighter and keener, that it may look further into all the mystery of love. The real slate of the life does not depend upon the tearless eye of the body; when the eye of the body is brightest the eye of the soul may be dimmest It is in the darkness that we see the stars. The eye of the body is meant to be extinguished, and all our members are intended to be but as a shadow; no uncommon thing has happened to us when we are in tears, or when we are beclouded by great apprehensions, or crushed under heavy burdens; all that belongs to the present state of life and the present system of nature, as we now stand related to them in our character as transgressors. When my heart and my flesh do fail, then the Lord will take me up. It is in our extremity that God can best show the riches of his grace

Many men would never have known Christ in all his dignity and tenderness, but for the sufferings they have undergone; they have been made acquainted with him in the companionship of affliction. We see more of Jesus Christ in Gethsemane than in any other place in all his history. One day we may have reason to exclaim, "It is good for me that I was afflicted." There are not wanting children of God who would not on any account surrender the trials they have undergone, because of the rich issues of wisdom and grace which they have realised in their hearts.