Key Verse: Verses 9 - “Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die.”
Many believe that Job’s wife was degrading Job when she says in verse 9, “Curse God and die.” I personally believe she was out of line, but I also believe she loved Job dearly and no longer wanted him to suffer.
This couple had been through a lot together: children dying, losing their livelihood with the loss of all their livestock, servants dying, Job suffering. But they, through God’s grace, made it through together and God blessed the end of their lives, doubling all they had before the suffering began.
When Jewish psychiatrist Victor Frankl was arrested by the Nazis in World War II, he was stripped of everything – property, family, possessions. He had spent years researching and writing a book on the importance of finding meaning in life – concepts that later would be known as logotherapy. When he arrived in Auschwitz, the infamous death camp, even his manuscript, which he had hidden in the lining of his coat, was taken away.
“I had to undergo and overcome the loss of my spiritual child,” Frankl wrote. “Now it seemed as if nothing and no one would survive me; neither a physical nor a spiritual child of my own! I found myself confronted with the question of whether under such circumstances my life was ultimately void of any meaning.”
He was still wrestling with that question a few days later when the Nazis forced the prisoners to give up their clothes.
“I had to surrender my clothes and in turn inherited the worn-out rags of an inmate who had been sent to the gas chamber,” said Frankl. “Instead of the many pages of my manuscript, I found in the pocket of the newly acquired coat a single page torn out of a Hebrew prayer book, which contained the main Jewish prayer, Shema Yisrael (Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one God. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.)
“How should I have interpreted such a ‘coincidence’ other than as a challenge to live my thoughts instead of merely putting them on paper?”
Later, as Frankl reflected on his ordeal, he wrote in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, “There is nothing in the world that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions, as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one’s life...He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.”
These sweethearts had a why to live: God; and so do you and your sweetheart. Your why to make it is “the glory of God” is at stake.
Dr. Mike Rouse
What to do:
✞Remember the words of C. S. Lewis when he was asked, “Why do the righteous suffer?” “Why not,” he asked, “they are the only ones who can take it.”
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