The Patience of Job

We are all familiar with the idiom, “The patience of Job” When we say a person has the patience of Job, we know it means that person is extraordinarily patient. It is a compliment. This is even though when we read the book of Job in the Bible, we see that he is not really very patient. There are pages and pages of him chewing out his friends and others who are accusing him of some hidden wrongdoing that must have brought about his layers of suffering. Who can blame him for losing patience with his accusers? The whole poetic drama is a long puzzle concerning whether misery comes in direct proportion to a person’s misdeeds. There are confusing details on nearly every page of the Bible, and Job is particularly bewildering.

I get cranky when just a little hungry. Job’s complaints are great, but his misery is indescribably great. I understand completely why he barks back at his visitors, whose friendship takes the form of accusing him of sinfulness and a refusal to admit it. He loses his family members and his health, and his “friends” compound his suffering with criticism and social estrangement. His patience shows up in a few spots, and a celebrated example comes up in the Sunday Lessons this year. It is a passage familiar to us by its inclusion in the processional anthems at Christian burial too. It is a profound word of confidence and hope, that a protector and advocate will come through. It is a bold declaration that God will show up for him as his defending counsel:

Job said,
"O that my words were written down!
O that they were inscribed in a book!

O that with an iron pen and with lead
they were engraved on a rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives,
and that at the last he will stand upon the earth;

and after my skin has been thus destroyed,
then in my flesh I shall see God,

whom I shall see on my side,
and my eyes shall behold, and not another." (Job 19:23-27a)

Job is at the end of his rope; he has no one. Preceding the passage we examine is this description of his state:

Mere children despise me and, when I rise, turn their backs on me: my intimate companions loathe me, and those whom I love have turned against me. My bones stick out through my skin, and I gnaw my under-lip with my teeth. Pity me, pity me, you that are my friends; for the hand of God has touched me…Have you not had your teeth in me long enough? (Job 19:18-22)

How can we not pity him? And how in the world can he yet hold out hope? He is indeed patient for the Lord’s redemption. This is an incredible message for today. The world can be frightening. People are worried. We have suffered to one degree or another. The fearsome things that are always with us, disease, war, division, and quarreling, have swirled about us in dense waves in recent years. People have complaints about the Triple “P” Ranch this world is enduring: many months of pestilence around the world, politics across the globe, and is there not a world leader with the first initial “P” too.

And even if you have properly controlled your “news” watching and all the aggravation that stirs, we still have all experienced personal losses of many kinds. Human beings cannot avoid this perpetual vulnerability. Lately, losses and the grief that comes with them are heavy, indeed. This may be the passage that best expresses Job’s patience, and we need to adopt his character here. Things may not have gone as we want; we may be crying, “How long?” But we can realize patience and faith as fruit of the Spirit.  We can stand up with Job’s outlook (paraphrasing here) and declare, “I know that my vindicator lives and that he will rise and stand up for me, stand at my side…I shall see my advocate, even God himself, whom I shall see with my own eyes, I myself and no other.”