Job - A Story of Unlikely Joyنموونە

After my parents divorced, Dad remarried and moved to forty-two acres to begin his dream as a cattleman-rancher. I fell in love with caring for our farm animals. One summer, a mama cow died before weaning her calf. Dad asked me to bottle nurse her calf until it got strong enough to fend for itself. I named the black calf Inky and spent every moment tending to him. Inky bonded to me following me around like an oversized puppy. He slept outside the house, curled up in the circle of our snoring dogs. They completely accepted Inky despite the fact that he mooed instead of barked. When Inky was a year old, Dad told me it was time to assimilate him back into the herd. Not too long after, a pack of rabid dogs attacked and killed Inky. Dad teared up as he explained sorrowfully that even though Inky was a yearling and big enough to defend himself, he probably didn’t because he thought of dogs as friends not as dangerous enemies. I was crushed. 

My less-than-tender stepmother drove me down to the pasture while Dad buried the corpses. When I saw Inky’s remains, I sobbed, devastated by the realization that had I not turned Inky into a pet, he never would’ve been killed.  When Dad came up from the barn, my stepmother announced in a huff that she was leaving to go shopping because she was sick of hearing me cry over a stupid cow. It was the first time (although certainly not the last) I realized that grief is not an inclusive emotion. That deep ache tends to be an isolating event. That despair tends to put uncomfortable distance between the heartbroken and the observers. 

It would be hard to find anyone who walked pain more solitarily than Job. His friends, much like my stepmother, quickly revealed their distaste for Job’s honest despair, distancing themselves from the messiness of his grief with condescending admonitions veiled in flowery poetry. Everything they say to Job isn’t technically wrong. Frankly, most of what they say about God’s inscrutability and divine supremacy is accurate. But the spirit of what they preach is crooked because they’re oblivious to the fact that Job has a relationship with his Creator. While his grievances against God may have rung audaciously in their hypocritical ears, Job had a right to air them because of the very real bond that existed between him and his heavenly Father.