I keep reading Job today. I can’t imagine my skin covered with sores. Job cried out in his agony to die and leave this earth instead of continuing it’s suffering. No one could take the suffering away. I don’t believe in the devil. I don’t believe that the devil subjects us to suffering. I believe we make choices leading to our growth. I think events happen in our lives to teach us something. I believe that we reach and impasse in our lives where we find it uncomfortable to change and grow. Yet life demands that we grow and evolve. When we fight and struggle with this evolutionary process, it makes living more difficult.
I don’t value my job anymore. I don’t really see a lot of value in it. I work with people whose primary concern is what they are going to eat or wear for the day. They don’t look for much more in life. They criticize and ridicule others who eat or wear something different than their customs or culture dictate.
I live and have my being in a culture that values the physical. They value physical labor and physical appearance. Spiritual needs are addressed very superficially and literally. People quote scriptures and blame God for every negative aspect of their life. They blame God for the flood which devastates their houses and yet they don’t blame themselves for failing to build a damn in anticipation of the yearly rainy season which brings the floods.
There was an ice storm in the region 19 years ago. The ice storm damaged trees and buildings. It never occurred to anyone to cut down the trees damaged by the storm and plant new ones. They would rather be complacent and stare at the damaged trees and blame God. The ice storms occur every 100 years and people talk about avoiding the planting of trees so that they can avoid the terrible sounds of frozen branches snapping. No one considers that they will not be around when the next ice storm occurs and that the trees will be quite beneficial for 100 years and if they do die in the storm, they will have served their purpose.
I see so much of human nature in the book of Job. People assume that suffering is due to some act of God that needs punishing. Pain communicates to us that there is something wrong which needs to be corrected. Misfortunate does not translate into evil. Many children born with negative characteristics that both children share like sickle cell committed no sin. Human beings possess different characteristics because of the evolutionary process. Those characteristics manifest at different times. When we celebrate life instead of mourning that life meeting some pre-planned expectations, we abide in a world of gratitude.
I work with children and the adults who work with children as well as the people who love them. They are not always the same people. I serve as a bridge during crisis to connect people with the needed resources. I don’t see many of these people after the crisis has been abated. They move on and I move on. I celebrate my availability when my services were needed and let them go on to their greater good.
I can’t imagine having 10 children like Job and losing them in a single moment. I don’t want to think about how it would alter my life and my relationships after that event occurred. I pray that I never lose a child. I know that I can not focus on death as long as there is life to be lived.
I avoid my “friends” during stressful events in my lives. Like Job, I have a brain and I don’t need someone to tell me what I am doing wrong. I don’t need someone to help me focus on sickness, death and sin or to allow me to feel depressed and sorry for myself. I retreat to solitude and focus my mind on learning something new and feeling alive.
My children felt that I was unfeeling during their childhood illnesses because I focused on what needed to be done and I did it. I didn’t want to sit around crying and complaining about the way things appeared. I chose to change the appearance of sickness and disease. I knew that both my children suffered from allergies and asthma. I chose to implement lifestyle changes and plan for activities and outings which celebrated life instead of focusing on sickness and disease. I knew that planning trips to Disneyland and the San Diego Zoo which required everyone to be healthy would be a self-fulfilling prophesy. I knew that focusing on sickness and how to avoid disease would also serve to be a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I am a Scientist. I don’t see the contradiction between science and spirituality. I have read the bible several times before in it’s entirety. I have read Job many times when I have felt the pressures of life. This time the law impresses me so much with it’s order and structure. I can see the hand of God and recognize it as the work of a Master Scientist who created an orderly Universe.
Job represents a beautiful rose to me. I plant, water nurture and feed the rose but I still must prune the rose. I cut off the dead branches and sometimes the sap runs. I cut off the extra blossoms so that more nutrients can get to the remaining rose. I pull out the grass and weeds so that they won’t use the nutrients that are needed by the rose. My roses bloom magnificently with this kind of care.
I don’t worry about the cutting hurting the plant because I understand the advantage of cutting. I don’t worry about the blossoms that never bloom because they were not meant to bloom. I don’t grieve the grass and weeds that get pulled so that my rose may have nutrients. I believe it is so with God. We are trimmed and pruned so that we may bloom more magnificently.
