Broken Praise

A View From the Lower Story

Job’s life at the opening of the book that bears his name is a perfect picture of human flourishing. Job’s spiritual, financial, relational, physical, emotional, and vocational life was fully intact.

Then, in a single day, he lost everything. Two separate groups of people, the Sabeans and the Chaldeans, attacked and killed all the workers and ran off with five hundred oxen, five hundred donkeys, and three thousand camels. Fire killed all seven thousand sheep and the shepherds who oversaw them. If that weren’t enough, on the same day, a mighty wind came and collapsed his house on all ten of his children, and they died.

Then, a few days later, Job was afflicted “with painful sores from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head. Then Job took a piece of broken pottery and scraped himself with it as he sat among the ashes” (Job 2:7–8 NIV).

What are we to make of all this from the Lower Story?

Well, Job’s wife felt this all came from the hand of God. God was responsible for all this calamity. She offered up this advice to her husband, “Are you still maintaining your integrity? Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9 NIV).

Job’s three friends paid him a visit. With the initial goal to sympathize and comfort Job, they sat with him in the ashes, and no one said a word. At the end of the seven days Job spoke and poured out his heart to his friends. Out of his extreme pain, he wished he had never been born.

Then Job’s friends spoke up one at a time. They felt all this calamity came from the hand of God. He had sinned, and God was punishing him. The four of them went through three cycles of speeches, always with the same conclusion: “It’s your fault, Job.”

When everyone was done talking, Job maintained his devotion to God. He questioned God but never cursed him. Here is what he said, “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised” (Job 1:21 NIV). Job offered his broken praise to God.

A View From the Upper Story

Very few books in the Bible give us a clearer view from the Upper Story. While Job never knew what happened to cause all this, we do.

One day Satan visited God and suggested that Job only followed him because he surrounded Job with protection. If God were to remove the protection, Job would curse God. God disagreed and allowed Satan to do anything he wanted short of touching Job himself. This led to the complete loss of his business and his ten children. We are given this summary: “In all this, Job did not sin by charging God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22 NIV).

Satan came for a second visit and sought permission to afflict Job physically. God allowed it, and hence the painful boils all over his body. In all this Job maintained his devotion to God, even though he had no idea why this was all happening to him. Again:

He questioned God but did not curse God.

When we come to chapter 38, God speaks. God questioned Job and invited him to answer back. For four chapters, God put Job in his place by giving him a glimpse of God’s eternal power and purpose. Sort of with tongue in cheek, God said, “What is the way to the abode of light ?And where does darkness reside? Can you take them to their places? Do you know the paths to their dwellings? Surely you know, for you were already born !You have lived so many years!” (Job 38:19–21NIV).

When God finished speaking, it was time for Job to answer. Recognizing that God can do all things, and his plans cannot be thwarted, Job responded, “You asked, ‘Who is this that obscures my plans without knowledge?’ Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me to know” (Job 42:3).

Job got it: “There is a God, and I’m not him.”

God has a bigger Upper Story plan that can’t be stopped. His plan is good, and we must trust him even when we don’t have all the answers.

Once the test was complete, and Job showed Satan a thing or two about following God during extreme adversity, God blessed the later years of his life and restored all that Job lost one hundred times over.

God knew one other thing that Job didn’t know at the time. That you would be reading his story four thousand years later to gain perspective on living successfully in the Lower Story by offering God our broken praise even during times of trouble and suffering.

A Moment to Reflect

1. Have you or someone you know blamed God for a tragedy and decided to curse him? What do you think of Job’s response?
2. In Job 42, what do you learn from Job’s response back to God?
3. How would you feel if God used you in an assignment like Job’s?