Positioning Ourselves For Restoration

“When Job prayed for his friends, the LORD restored his fortunes. In fact, the LORD gave him twice as much as before!” (Job 42:10)

And they lived happily ever after…

As I write this, Downton Abbey is in its final season. There is one particular woman in this drama, Edith, who has had it “hard”, relatively speaking. She’s the middle girl. Nothing is expected of her and she is often ridiculed and relegated as unimportant. Her older sister is flat out mean to her. She’s left at the altar once. She scandalously gets involved with a married man. He goes off to Germany to try to get a divorce in order to be free to marry Edith only to disappear and later is confirmed dead. In the meantime, Edith discovers she is pregnant. A proper English ‘Lady’, pregnant out of wedlock. Shocking! She cannot claim this daughter as her own and an entire subplot has emerged around hiding this girl’s identity. Nothing quite goes right for Edith.

In this final season, the writers promise to wrap every character’s story up. A friend and I were discussing this show over lunch one day and she said: “I just want Edith to finally be happy. For something to go right for her. “

In any good story, we long for a happy ending. A good resolution. One that we walk away from feeling is right and just. Downton Abbey fans want that. Readers of Job want that. Anyone living life wants that.

As Job stands before God, humble, empty, and completely broken, God comes to Job and restores him. The verses tell us that Job ended up with twice what he lost.

It is tempting to read these last few verses in Job and imagine God, like a genie, snapping His almighty fingers and poof – everything is made right. In the blink of an eye Job’s fortunes and family are restored. This makes us impatient for our own restoration. We want it right now.

We need read these verses carefully and understand this: Job’s restoration required forgiveness, took years, and involved other people. Job had to position himself for restoration.

His first task was to forgive Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophar. Men who had attacked, accused, and belittled him. Job had to set aside all that he was harboring against them in order to do what God told him to do: pray for them. We cannot pray for people who have hurt us if we do not first do the hard work of forgiving them. When Job offered his prayer, from a forgiving heart, the LORD accepted his prayer.

The verses do not say this, but I do believe that Job’s physical illness was supernaturally cured. Skin diseases were culturally abhorrent. Job would have been considered unclean and his community would have shunned him. When we read that his brothers and sisters and former friends came and feasted, we can infer that the cultural barrier had been removed. The very first act of God was to restore Job to community.

Job’s wealth increased through the restoration of community. They each brought gifts of money and gold. From this he was able to rebuild his herds.

Job reconciled with his wife and together they had nine more children.

At a minimum, God restored Job’s family and wealth incrementally over nine years.

I hope the writers of Downton Abbey will wrap up Edith’s story in a nice little package with a bow on top. Real life is rarely like that. It can take years to fully restore a marriage, overcome financial devastation, or heal from injury or illness. We get impatient with the Lord and want the miraculous, immediate resolution.

Not every story will have the happy ending in the here and now like Job’s did. We must recognize that. We cannot read Job and assume that we will come through our trials doubly blessed. We may not. But we can read Job and know with certainty that we will meet God in the midst of our trials, that restoration, in whatever form it takes, may take time, and we can look for the incremental blessing that assures us God is active.

Today, pray for the wisdom to see past current circumstances toward the future. How are you experiencing God? What does restoration look like to you? Have you positioned yourself for restoration? Has it already begun?

Blessings my friend, Denise

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Linking Up today with Crystal at #IntentionalTuesday