| The Ministry of Comfort |
Chapter 4 |
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It is easy enough to say that God gave, and then to bless His name. God is always giving, and we readily see goodness and love in His gifts. It would have been easy for Job, as his prosperity increased, adding to his possessions, covering his fields with flocks, to say, “It is God who gives all this,” and then to add, “Blessed be His holy name.” It would have been easy as, one by one, his children came, bringing gladness and brightness into his home, to praise God for them, and to say, “The Lord gave – blessed be name of the Lord.”
But it was not so easy now, when all this prosperity had vanished, and when his children lay dead, to put the new chord into the song and say, “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away: blessed be the name of the Lord.” Yet that is just what Job did. It was the Lord who had given him all that had made his life happy, and it was the same Lord who now had taken everything away – the same Lord and the same love.
There seems to have been in the stricken father a trust which was not shaken by all the calamities which had fallen upon him in such swift succession. He was kept in perfect peace. He had received good at God’s hands in countless ways, and when trouble and disaster came he saw no reason to change his thoughts of God as his friend. He did not complain, nor blame God, but accepted the losses of property and now the sudden smiting down of his children, with unquestioning confidence. It was the same Lord and the same love that had first given and now had taken away.
There is immeasurable comfort in this truth for all who are called to give back again the gifts which God has bestowed upon them. God is a giving God, but He is also a God who sometimes takes away, and, in taking away, He is not changed in His character nor in His feeling toward us, His children. He loves us just as truly and as tenderly when He takes away the things or the beings we love as He did when He gave them into our hands. They were sent to us in love, and for our good they came with their blessing for our life. Then the taking away is also in love, and has good and a blessing in it.
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