I heard many people say to me when they heard parts of my life story – “I don’t know how you did that, I never could.” Perhaps you have said it…

“I can’t imagine losing my child. I could never live if that happened.”
“I can’t imagine going through cancer, that’s my greatest fear.”
“If my spouse betrayed me, I’m not sure I could ever trust again.”
“If I could not walk or move like I do now, I don’t think I could handle that.”

Insert your own, “I could never…”

But people have faced these things. The only thing is, you don’t choose when these things happen. You face them when you have to.

I have recently faced the hardest trauma I’ve ever experienced. The only thing is, hardly anyone saw it. It was almost entirely behind closed doors. It has been the most isolating, soul-draining, gut-wrenching experience of my lifetime.

As anyone tends to do when you’re going through tragedy, you go to the book of Job. Job experienced all the trauma; this is definitely the one story in the Bible that we can truly look at and say, “I could never…”

But he did.

Looking at this story through a fresh lens, and unfortunately the lens of fresh trauma, I see things I didn’t see before.

-Most of the book doesn’t focus on what happened to Job (the actual experience and details)
-Most of the book focuses on the conversation and dialogue that Job had with his friends
-Most of the book shows a process that Job went through in his heart
-A bomb-dropping perspective shift when God breaks the silence

This leads to this one verse (which almost leaped off the page at me):

“My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen you.” (Job 42:5)

How did Job come to this perspective?

Job had to go through some things to arrive at this place, and there weren’t any shortcuts to avoid the pain.

1. Job lost it all.
2. Then he can’t do anything about it (physically, even).
3. His wife was pretty much no help (“just curse God and die”).
4. His friends come along and really try to offer encouragement. Job vents (in quite a raw kind of way).
5. His friends begin to try to explain how this could have happened and unfortunately arrive at the place where Job must have brought it on himself.
6. Job gets pretty ticked off at his friends and continues this back-and-forth banter for a while.
7. Job then realizes that he has a case to plead. He’s done it all right. And he pleads that case before God and pretty much demands an explanation.
8. God finally speaks more towards the end of the book and shows Job the truth about where he’s at.

I wonder why all the in-between. Couldn’t God have just told Job what he needed to say so he could have checked the box, cleaned up all this, and begun rebuilding his life?

I think because Job had to realize that his validation and perspective wouldn’t come from an external source. God was the only one that REALLY knew what was going on.

God wanted to do work in Job and his friends, too. Because what happens next is so interesting.

God shows Job how small he really is and how God really does have it all together.

Job says, “I really can’t even say anything anymore, I’m just going to shut my mouth at this point” (my paraphrased version).

Then Job says the (words jumping off the page phrase), “My ears had heard of You, but now my eyes have seen you.”

Job no longer saw God through the lens of his circumstance, but saw the circumstance through the lens of God’s perspective.

Job didn’t have enough insight to the complexity of the universe to even make his case. What Job needed to do was trust. But he needed the perspective with which to do that.

And God is so poetic in the way He does it:

Where were you when I laid the earth’s foundation?
Tell me, if you understand.
Who marked off its dimensions? Surely you know!
On what were its footings set,
or who laid its cornerstone –
while the morning stars sang together
and all the angels shouted for joy? (38:4-7)

What happens after that is pretty cool also – God tells his friends how messed up they got it and to go offer a sacrifice to make things right, and then tells Job to pray for his friends. Job does – and THEN he restores everything to him double what he lost.

I’m still in the tunnel of darkness while writing this. But I think I just learned to shut my mouth.
I’m 44 years old and I have heard of God my entire life, but I think I am just now beginning to see Him with my eyes.

My “I could never” is becoming “He is working all things together.”

To God be the glory in all things in my life. The best is yet to come.