A few weeks ago, after another difficult conversation and another unexpected disappointment, I found myself standing in my kitchen thinking about Job. Not Job sitting in ashes. Not Job’s suffering. His wife.
After losing her children, her security, and the life she once knew, she looked at her husband and said, “Curse God and die.”
For years I’ve read those words with a bit of judgment. How could she say that?
Lately, I understand her better.
Her words could be read as bitter or maybe even as desperate. She really seems to think Job should give up on God and reject his faith. And, in a small way, I get that.
Absorbing hit after hit in fast succession makes cynicism feel reasonable. Piled up pain brings a temptation to consider faith to be naïve. And in that place, we can either curse God and die or cling to Him and live.
Job reprimands his wife asking, should we accept good from God and not trouble? Faith is an invitation to trust the heart of God through joy, grief, abundance, loss, long nights, and unanswered questions.
The past stretch of life has been hard in ways I don’t always know how to explain. I don’t know what comes next. The difficult stretch might end soon or more hard things could be ahead. But this much I know: God’s character does not change when my circumstances do. And despite the trouble that has come, I am stubbornly determined to cling to God and live.
So that’s where I am today. Trusting. Believing. Still clinging to God and choosing life.
As I’ve wrestled through the past year and a half, I’ve found myself returning again and again to the book of James. James doesn’t offer easy answers, but it does offer practical wisdom for living with steadfast faith in the middle of trials. Its words about perseverance, wisdom, and wholehearted devotion have become deeply personal to me, convicting me in painful ways.
I don’t know what you’re facing today. Maybe you’re carrying grief, disappointment, uncertainty, or a burden no one else can see. Whatever it is, my encouragement to you is simple: cling to God and live.