lured by desires, frustrating us with delay, trying our patience, by training us to become righteous, rewarding ones treated unfairly, seeking our confession and repentance, promising us justice and forgiveness, ending constant accusations, removing all reasons for us to remain angry, suspending punishment for our sins, exercising mercy, abolishing any need to deal with us harshly, withdrawing what we deserve, assuring love of the Lord remains forever.
Joseph: Indeed, God tests my patience, revealing messages of people's dreams, tantalizing my hopes with other's promises, seeming to entangle me in hopelessness, wondering what might come next, trusting He must have reasons to extend my stay in a hole of nothingness.
Bystander: God has reasons, patiently unfolding His design, never for our knowing now or much later, perhaps coming at my life's end. Behold His plan, seeing reappearance of the afflicted one, Job.
Suffering Endures Amid Comforter’s Failures
Joseph: I welcome you again Job, if there can be such a greeting to this place, but now at least you find a home if you can call this home, trusting it is somewhat better than trekking through a desert of nothingness. Welcome.
Job: I trusted your destiny would be more hopeful than mine, counting the gifts blessing you more than me. So nothing surprises me more than to see you again.
Joseph: Fate's gods instructed by my Lord swing me high and low as my story has told, but let me first hear of your journey bringing us to meet again.
Job: After you left I was ordered out of the oasis, being told no one could stay there more than one night, exercising caution, preventing vagrant homeless people--ineligible misfits--from making any oasis a permanent home, not even for ones qualified to be blameless, being upright never being enough. So I was forced to move on, continuing my exile, wandering to some other place, unknown in the morning, known by evening. After some days, another caravan coming through, stopping to consider my worth, examining me for value, never as a person but as a commodity, soon believed I could be sold to rebels, rogues fearing me little, discounting my suffering, valuing me as a living sacrifice to appease someone's god, believing Molech would be satisfied with me, accepting my life, ending it to gather their rewards, so they picked up my pieces, scattered as they were, my dignity in shambles, weeping from my sores.
Bystander: God scatters upright people, dispersing them as pieces, reducing their pride to shambles, hoping they sprout into new endeavors to be blessings He created them to be.
Joseph: So if you suffer in a manner pleasing God, keep on doing what is right, and trust your lives to the God who created you.
Job: How can I do what is right, knowing I am worthless by all accounts, because I was never sold, deemed too worthless for any price, so the traders gave me away, someone taking me for their amusement, but they found nothing to entertain them, less than a baboon on a chain, so they cast me on a dung heap, but even there I was rejected, it's visitors offended by me, contaminating their site, regarding me as an unacceptable defilement of their latrine, driving them away from their daily visitations. I had no alternative but to hide in the necropolis, knowing it would be avoided at all costs, the last place to visit, shunning the final depository, the dump for unfilled human hopes, forever silent except for the noise of decay, unheard with its overwhelming stench. With my spirit broken and my fruitful days extinct, the grave awaited me, mockery taunting me having ended, as I no longer suffered provocation. But my graveyard sanctuary was stolen, having me thrown out as some caretaker for the dead spotted me, and reporting me to authorities, I was seized and judged to be demon-possessed, believing no one would live among the dead except ones harboring the devil's assistants. Judged to be hopeless, I was sent to this prison, trusting it would torment no one except those deserving to be here.
Joseph: Is your spirit now broken, destroyed so you can find sanctuary here?
Job: Exiled from all fearing people, running as anyone unkempt of mind or body, some may dread me here, mocking me to conceal their understanding, ignoring any empathy to exalt my spirit, the self-righteous holding to their way, believing my days are past, gone with any desires of my heart, never asking again where is hope, trusting fate has determined my destiny to be merely dust, ashes to be thrown into the air for lamenting life's meaningless nothingness.
Joseph: This place, one step selected as an opportunity by God, does not need to be the pit I was once destined to survive, but is better than the beautified world of temptation I first encountered, attracting to distract me by human vices, but growing my wisdom, He was pleased with my response, recovering my destiny to resume His way, His plan to assure the commitment for me to be a brother's keeper, especially for ones like you, showing you have not been discarded, forced to move from one refuse heap to another.
Job: You think this place is more than a nursing home, waiting for time to prepare us for the grave, after society winnows us out as misfits, blazing cruelty out unjustly on the blameless, leaving them confused, wondering if they can ever have an arbiter, believing their destiny is hopeless before the Lord. Could I ever receive mercy, knowing it would be my only consolation, forgetting I have been a laughingstock for the senseless, easing my frightfulness for the righteous, granting me mercy to intercede for a new judgment?
Joseph: Can mercy bestow new wisdom, changing ones wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight? Be not wise with your own selves, wanting to return to being upright as you were once. Would those proud of being wise, learn to be foolish so they could become truly wise in God, realizing He tells ones seeking to be righteous to accumulate no treasures here, ones such as accumulated in the wealth you lost, telling you instead to store up treasures only in heaven?
Job: Yes, He showed me, destroying the treasures I lived for, built up here to make me upright, sending thieves to steal my wealth and winds of chance to end my family's lives. Expect no guardian angels to protect treasures coveted by human wisdom. Having lost my fortunes here, I can only wait to hear the Lord's words, giving me His side of the story. Hoping someday to rejoin life as I knew it seems impossible now. Still being blameless, no one can make me curse God, but I still call on Him to answer my suffering. If I hear no answers I will join those wanting to use me for destroying His goodness.
Bystander: Admitting you refuse to curse God, do you blame him for your tragedy?
Job: Could I blame God and preserve my virtue of being blameless, making me blameless but not God, One seeming to deserve blame, choosing me to be His victim, tarnishing His virtue, assigning Him a blame to consider? Would I be so bold to charge Him with blame, seeing it might be worse than cursing Him? With my accusations to blame Him, could He still claim to be righteous, bearing a stigma of One blamed?
Joseph: Where could you find wisdom to know?
Job: Fate sent wise ones, appearing in the wilderness, coming to help me, freely giving their advice, but my afflictions remain. Hear what they said, trusting me to follow their counsel.
Eli: Job, as I know you are named, I dare to venture words with you, hoping you will not be offended, realizing you have counseled many, upholding stumbling weak ones, filling them with sound wisdom, so I come to you as you advised others, trusting in the integrity of your ways, giving them hope, thinking the innocent never suffer to perish, asking where were the blameless cut off or the upright needing to become righteous. I will linger awhile, speaking now, knowing our thoughts require much contemplation, integrating our discernments, trusting our wisdoms will choose to unify us with their presence.
Job: I need some one to present me faultless before the throne of God, inexpressibly pure, absolutely righteous, profoundly justifying my deeds. Who can share God's wisdom, helping to transfigure me, to save me from hell and destruction, advising me on how to continue sacrificing to Him, to satisfy the One wanting our absolute unrestrained devotion?
Eli: Seeking to bargain with God, wanting some spirit's witness to advocate for your innocence, to justify your blamelessness, testifying to the o
bscurity of His commands, pleading for someone to clarify God's expectations, reasoning to understand His wisdom, advising you what to do, you have always been in the way, perhaps blameless and upright, reasoning why you should never abandon yourself to Him, never completely surrendering, never thinking to witness Him as important, to acknowledge His Spirit being in you. With confession and redemption, you will no longer disrespectfully debate with Him, dismissing your obsession to call on Him for explanations, for responding to your persuasive arguments, rescinding your intensive resolve, giving up your will except for belief in the Lord, as you behold His spirit within you, looking to Him for revealing all your needed answers.
Joseph: Job, you can become a victim of words, even ones the Lord leads you to speak, convincing me to sometimes remain silent, realizing treason bristles in my family. Remember Bystander's admonition to be careful what you pray for, wishing for fulfillment of something to regret.
Bystander: Can we believe the blameless and upright are righteous, requiring nothing more