Job’s life had been a cakewalk—layers of sweet blessings iced with a thick frosting of more blessings. Then the cake collapsed. Job had to make a choice. It’s easy to love God when life is good, but how will you respond to God when things go sour? Job had lost all his possessions and his ten children. Now, he is about to lose his health.

Job 2:7-10
So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord and struck Job with loathsome sores from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head. And he took a piece of broken pottery with which to scrape himself while he sat in the ashes. Then his wife said to him, “Do you still hold fast your integrity? Curse God and die.” But he said to her, “You speak as one of the foolish women would speak. Shall we receive good from God, and shall we not receive evil?” In all this Job did not sin with his lips.

The spiritual life always involves a spiritual crossroads. Often, after a person’s verbal profession of faith, there is a painful life experience that calls for a pronouncement. Are you in or out? Will you follow Christ or not? Are you just a professor or a possessor? Job came to that crossroads in our passage today. He sat among the ashes of a broken body dealing with a broken heart. Would he curse God and die, or would he accept the blessings and the burdens?

Arthur Gossip was the pastor at Beechgrove Church in Aberdeen, Scotland.

In 1927, he was 54 years old, and things could not have been going better in his life or the life of the church. Then, very suddenly and unexpectedly, his wife died. The Sunday after her death, he preached a sermon trying to reconcile his faith with such a sudden and tragic loss. These are his words:

I do not understand this life of ours. But still less can I comprehend how people in trouble and loss and bereavement can fling away peevishly from the Christian faith. In God’s name, fling to what? Have we not lost enough without losing that too?[1]

There will be challenging times in this life. Don’t “fling away peevishly” what you know to be true. Trust God. He is always faithful.

Father, thank you for the example of Job and John Gossip, who clung to you in the difficult times of their lives. Lord, give us the strength to do the same. Thank you when blessings flow. Help us to thank you when trouble comes. In Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] Ray Pritchard, Keep Believing: Finding God in Your Deepest Struggles (Gideon House Books, 2019), 10.