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An Appointment of Misery
Job 7.1-4 describes Job’s dilemma of suffering. He asks, “Has not man a hard service upon earth, and are not his days like the days of a hireling? Like a slave who longs for the shadow, and like a hireling who looks for his wages, so I am allotted months of emptiness, and nights of misery are apportioned to me. When I lie down I say, ‘When shall I arise?’ But the night is long, and I am full of tossing till the dawn.”
Job endures prolonged agony in his suffering. His troubles seemed to never end, and those troubles were “wearing him thin.” The slightest glimmer of hope seemed to fade quickly. Job understood that a hired servant would receive wages and servants could rest, but he saw no end to his dilemma - no payday, no relief.
This is not unique to Job. It is the feeling of many who suffer today. Some have been invalids for years. Some have never seen a day where they felt well, or a moment free from pain. Strangely enough, they survive. Some do more than survive - they conquer. They learn to live with their affliction. They have managed their difficulties. They make the best of their situation. They even learn to smile.
If you make an effort to visit and “cheer up” those in affliction, you will most often be cheered yourself. You may to to extend comfort, but you receive more comfort than you can give. For those who appear to need their emptiness turned to fullness and their drabness turned to splendor, your visit to them may be welcomed with a smile. A song of thanks may flow form their lips rather than complaint. Those who suffer will make you feel as though you are in the room of a warrior, not a prisoner.
It has been my experience to see those who suffer and indulge in self-pity to be the ones who have a difficult time enduring prolonged problems. The formula for success for the one who continually bears his “handicap” is the same as the one who has no “handicap.” Lose self in service to others. Forget self while maintaining and interest in others. Try to make others happy instead of looking for others to make you happy.
Those who strive to make others happy will look upon their troubles as “light affliction, which is but for a moment.” He will be looking for that “far exceeding and eternal weight of glory” (2 Corinthians 4.17). He will also learn to appreciate the promise made through Peter; “But the God of all grace...after that ye have suffered a while, make you perfect, establish, strengthen, settle you” (1 Peter 5.10).
