The words of Job in...
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The words of Job in Job 7 may not be pleasant words, but they are realistic ones. Who among us has not, at one time or another, felt we have "a hard service upon the earth" and who among us has not known "months of emptiness" and "nights of misery?" The good news, however, is that these difficult times hold promise -- the promise of new discovery and deepening faith. This conclusion was reached many years ago by a minister named Bernard Martin who shared his struggles in a pithy volume entitled If God Does Not Die. In the postscript of this immensely helpful book, Martin includes a letter he wrote to a professor in the wake of his crisis. At one point in the letter he writes, "I would be able to sum up in a few lines what has happened. All that I can say is that I have been confronted, somewhat abruptly and violently, with all my past life and with my pastoral ministry. I am presently emerging from this confrontation with a new vision of life, and with the possibility of considering others -- as well as myself -- in an entirely transformed perspective." Martin stood where Job stood and found in that context not death, but life.
