snowboy’s

For The Dark Knight lovers, you may remember Harvey Dent who turned into a villain from the city’s best District Attorney; from someone with high confidence, even better than Batman’s, into someone with no confidence in justice.

It happens after he lost the woman he was about to marry, blaming Batman to tell him to stay just in the unjust time in Gotham. The lost of his lover changes him, and Joker manages to bring his bad and dark side out of him. The city’s best District Attorney changed into one of the criminals. When he died, however, he was lucky for Batman wants to keep him a hero.

Let us learn from the Bible, from a character named Job (Ayub in Indonesian). Now, the first attitudes about Job the Bible noted were: that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil (Job 1:1b, KJV). After those qualities, comes the narration about the family, that he had seven sons and three daughters (Job 1:2, KJV). After that is his wealth: His substance also was seven thousand sheep, and three thousand camels, and five hundred yoke of oxen, and five hundred she asses, and a very great household; so that this man was the greatest of all the men of the east (Job 1:3, KJV).

With those situations, he could have been one the happiest in the world: fearing God, having a happy family, and possessing wealth. But look, God took everything he had: his family and wealth (Job 1:13-19, KJV). What is amazing from this man is he did not in the first place blame God for that. In fact, he arose, and rent his mantle, and shaved his head, and fell down upon the ground, and worshipped, And said, Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD (Job 1:20-21, KJV).

Can you ever imagine? Someone who has just lost his family and wealth said such things to God. His faith must have been bigger than all he possessed the whole time. And what is more pleasing, the next verse noted that: In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.

When you read further, you will find out that his wife, who survived, asked him to curse God for the disaster, yet he answered marvelously: shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil? (Job 2:10, KJV). Even when the three friends came and tried to drive him away from God, yet he stood still.

To make the long story short (a blog would not be enough), God came to just everything. Toward the three friends, He said that His wrath was upon them and He wanted them to offer a sacrifice to Him through Job for his will God accepted (Job 42:7-8, KJV). And after Job prayed for his friends, God turned the captivity of him, and have him twice as much as he previously had and of course his family (Job 42:10-11, KJV).

What can we learn from the book of Job? Simply, there are few things. First, we should not blame God for every disaster or bad thing happen to us. Remember what Job said, “shall we receive good at the hand of God, and shall we not receive evil?” The next is to keep on praising the Lord, as what he did by saying, “Naked came I out of my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return thither: the LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.”

After not complaining and praising Him, we should do what Dent could not do: withstand the world’s temptation. It comes not only from our friends, but in Job’s case, it came even from his own wife. Still, he hold tight to his faith.

The greatest thing he did, in my opinion, is still communicating with God, even during such condolence. We might not communicate with God, even when we have joy. Job is surely a good example of people who are afraid of God.

What about us? Are we willing to act like Job did during our condolence? Are we willing to stay close to God during such moments in our lives? Like it or not, we should stay close to God more and more every day, in joy and tears, for I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing (John 15:5, KJV).