tried and true

Job 19:21-27; Psalm 27 I believe that I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living; Luke 10:1-12

Words of St. Jerome...
"Happy the man who makes progress daily, who does not weigh what he did yesterday, but make shis resolution for today and keeps it. The holy man sets his heart on ascending..."


We turn our attention to Job. There are many things that can be said about Job and his predicament. He goes from a man who has everything, house, family, wealth, faith, happiness to a man that is covered with sores sitting on a heap of ashes, mourning the loss of all that he had known.

He goes from rejoicing in his life to renouncing the day he was born.

Sounds like life, doesn't it. How quickly things change. How quickly we go from the hero of the hour to the villian. How quickly we fall from the heights we ascend.

Change is inevitable. Change we do not plan for is guaranteed. The true test of character is seen in what we do when thngs turn sour, when the world falls apart and our hands are left with nothing.

Job was being tested for his faith.
This is how the story begins: "Have you considered my servant Job, there is none like him on the earth, a simple an dupright man, and fearing God and avoiding evil."

The voice of God resounds with such acclamations.

"Stretch forth your hand a little, and touch all that he hath, and see if he cursed thee to thy face."

The vocie of Satan echoes forth a challenge.


This conversation is not soley reserved to Job, but is this not the lot of humanity. Do we not base our faith on our comfort, our wealth, our good times.

Does not God demand more from us! Shoud not God expect more from us.

Who of us wants to be loved soley becasue of what we can offer? Do we not want to be loved for the sake of love?

Does not the God, our Father, also desire this, to be loved for his own sake and not because of the things he can offer?

Job 1:22 "In all these things Job sinned not by his lips, nor spoke any foolish things against God."

"Naked I came from my mother's womb, naked I shall go back. The Lord gives and the lord taken away, blessed be the name of the lord."

And today we hear these words of faith that have been tried and found to be true, without alloy, refined in the furnace of suffering faith comes forth shinning and brilliant, "But as for me, I know my vindicator lives, and that he will at last stand forth upon the dust; whom I myself shall see; my own eyes, not another's, shall behold, and from my flesh I shall see God, my inmost being is consumed with longing."

True faith requires purification.