The Patience of Job?

On 14 June 1960, just one month before his wife's death, C. S. Lewis wrote to Peter Bide, the priest who had performed Lewis's death-bed wedding ceremony and who had layed hands on Joy for healing. Bide's own wife had just been diagnosed with cancer. Lewis wrote:

"Joy says (do you agree?) that we needn't be too afraid of questionings and expostulations: it was the impatience of Job not the theodicies of Elihu that were pleasing to God. Does He like us to 'stand up to Him' a bit? Certainly He cannot like mere flattery -- resentment masquerading as submission thru' fear.

"How impossible it wd. be now to face it without rage if God Himself had not shared the horrors of the world He made!" Collected Letters, Volume III, p. 1161

The phrase, the patience of Job, is based upon a poor translation of James 5:11. A better translation reads as follows: "As you know, we consider blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job's perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy."

Job was anything but patient. However, he did persevere. The Lord was pleased with Job, not because he was patient, but because he honestly sought the Lord in the midst of his many and deep sufferings. As Rick Warren has written: "God listens to the passionate words of his friends; he is bored with predictable, pious cliches." The Purpose-Driven Life, Chapter 12, paragraph 9.

Prayer: Lord, help me to seek you honestly and passionately even in the midst of suffering, looking unto Jesus who endured even death on a cross. Amen.

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