“Life is like a box of chocolates” – Forrest Gump
It’s a good thought. Chocolate is good. Caramel is Good. Coconut, nuts, cherries… Maybe the orange cream isn’t great, or the hard toffee? But in general, unless one is allergic to chocolate, it would mean life is like one great surprise after another. But life isn’t really like that is it?
What about when you suffer loss? When you get sick? What is life like when your relationships are strained to the limit, when your bills are greater than your income or you lose your job? Maybe this doesn’t happen to you, but as an ambassador of Christ you are called to walk with and help those who are struggling. Can you say to someone who can’t make ends meet, “Life is like a box of Chocolate”?
The answer to the toughest of life’s “chocolates” can be found in a Job. Not in employment, but Job, specifically chapters 13, 19, and 30.
About 3000 years ago God allowed the devil to put a man named Job to the ultimate test. Job was a faithful man and blessed by God, but God allowed the devil take away His family, take away his health, and take away his money to see if he would continue to walk faithfully with God.
When you have suffered some loss, great or small, emotional or physical, what was your reaction? Did you run toward God or away? Did you try to escape reality or try to understand it? Perspective is the answer to recovering from trouble and holding onto hope.
Job wrote, “But when I hoped for good, evil came, and when I waited for light, darkness came. My inward parts are in turmoil and never still; days of affliction come to meet me. I go about darkened, but not by the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry for help.” (Job 30:26-28)
Life is least like a box of chocolates when trouble comes and overcomes us and we react by making poor choices. No life is exempt from suffering. Even Jesus suffered, but Hebrews tells us that Jesus learned obedience through suffering. Perspective.
When we look to dull the pain of life, when we seek to escape the stress, to find hope and joy again but do not run to God, we will always run to sin, to self destructive habits or activity. The problem is when we blame God for our situation (even though we ‘say’ we believe we are being tested, or that God is doing this for a reason…)
Job had NO IDEA what God was doing, but he said, “Though he slay me, I will hope in him; ” (Job 3:15) Perspective. Job was not controlled by the pain he was going through, he was controlled by a desire to follow God through ANYTHING!
Why? Job tells us. ”For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God” (Job 19:25-26)
My redeemer lives! I believe that. I have suffered a few great things in my life. I have been to the edge of giving up. But my redeemer spoke into my ear that He was near. And I found myself (much to my own surprise at the time) responding with, “Though he slay me, I will hope in Him.”
I found Job. And now as an ambassador of Christ, it is my intention to lead others to find a Job in their time of need. This is your call as well, for your own life and to help others.
May He not find you idle,
Pastor Rob