My spirit is crushed,….Where then is my hope?” Job 17:1, 15

“My spirit is crushed,….Where then is my hope?”  Honest statement.  Honest question.

It’s one of the reasons I love reading the Bible.  It’s unsanitized, unedited, raw, and brutally honest. When Job made his statement, and asked his question, he had recently buried all ten of his children.   With ten fresh graves most likely within sight, Job was “at the end of his rope.”

I was beginning my sophomore year in high school when my parents divorced.   In the months that followed, my dad, on occasion, would take me with him to bars.  I was only 15 years old at the time, but I can remember watching my dad, and folks around us.  Some laughed with friends, while others sat with blank stares on their faces like… well, like my dad.

Country music superstar, Toby Keith, offers spot-on insight from his hit, Hope on the Rocks:

Where do they go? They come here – to drown in their sorrow and cry in their beer.  They’re in need of a mindbender – I’m a bartender. At the end of the day, I’m all they’ve got.  Hope on the rocks.

 This blog isn’t about getting drunk.  It’s about what (Who) we reach for when we’ve lost hope.

Some revert to eating, or shopping, or busy-ness, or (fill in the blank.) But here’s what satan doesn’t tell you in the scripted music videos: The stories you hear in hit songs rarely, if ever, end up with a happy ending with a pretty bow on top.  (The home in which I grew up is a testimony to this.) Furthermore, after one’s mind “un-bends” from the alcohol and they find none of their circumstances have changed, what’s next?  Another mindbender?  The emotional & physical effort to forget, over time, simply becomes a mental treadmill that leads nowhere.

“Where, then, is my hope!”, (cries Job…and us)

“My hope is built on nothing less than Jesus’ blood and righteousness,” says the old hymn.  Job may have lived in antiquity, but he was a human being just like you and me.  When hopelessness visited his house he had a choice to make.  Against the advice of friends and family he made his choice:  I will hope in [God];…For I know that my Redeemer lives, (13:15; 19:25)

 And there it is – the pivotal truth that sets biblical Hope apart from all others.

I like bartenders.  They’re kind and compassionate people.  (And I like Toby Keith, by the way.  A lot.)  A bartender can pour your favorite drink and help you forget about your problems.  But (1) when we sober up our problems haven’t gone anywhere, and (2) most importantly, a bartender can’t die our our sins.  Only one Person could – and did – do that.  Driven by unfathomable love for us, Christ died on a bloody cross, and then conquered hopelessness by rising from the dead three days later.

Scholars believe the book of Job may be the oldest book in our Bible.  Yet God gave Job the supernatural ability to see millennia ahead to the cross of Christ and testify to the words yet to be written by Paul:  “We have our hope set on the living God, who is the Savior of all people, especially of those who believe.”

For Narnia.

Soli Deo Gloria, Nick