In our first reading for this morning, Job laments his miserable state. His wealth is gone. His children are dead. All he has left is his wife, who is telling him to curse God and die. So as he sits before his friends, he questions why he ever lived. If this is going to be the state of his life, if suffering is going to devour him like this, why didn’t he just die as an infant, before he knew what it meant to be in misery?
This is a common question among those who suffer, although Job articulates his complaints more beautifully than most. What’s the point of all this? If all you’re going to know is agony, why didn’t your life end before you knew it? If you weren’t going to live a life of lasting joy, why did God let you live a life at all?
But what Job doesn’t see in the midst of his sorrow is that this life is not all there is. Man was not created by God simply to enjoy life over the course of a hundred years. He was created by God to live with God forever, to find eternal joy with God forever, to rest in the arms of His Father in heaven forever. And so, what is the point of suffering? The point is that God will one day take it away from the sinners who did not deserve His mercy. Either in this life or the next, He will manifest His glory by removing the affliction and pouring out eternal life on those who didn’t deserve it, no matter how comparatively righteous they may have been, like Job. Quite simply, Job suffers so that he will understand the suffering of God’s own Son, the one who will be sent into the world to die for Job and to win eternal life for the miserable man covered in sorrows and grief.
And so it is for you. If you are clothed in sorrows, don’t ask yourself “why me” or “why now?” You won’t find any answers in the darkness. But you will find the answer to “what next” looking to the light of Christ. God has permitted this so that you will know the sorrows of Christ and hunger for the day when He lifts them off of you and clothes you in the warmth of His righteousness forever. Your suffering will not be in vain. It will bring you closer to the God who will bathe you in His glory, the God who has welcomed you into His arms and who will welcome you into His arms on the Last day, the God who never forgot you and never will.