May 16

Sparks Fly Upward

For hardship does not spring from the soil,
nor does trouble sprout from the ground.
Yet man is born to trouble
as surely as sparks fly upward.  ––Job 5:6-7

But this we know: God does all things well, though we are apt to charge His ways with inequality (Ezekiel 18:25) because they beggar human explanation.

––George Mylne, 1871

The big mistake made by Job’s friends is something I see some Christian men get sucked into: when something goes wrong in a friend’s life they assume the guy is being punished by God. As we discussed a few days ago (“Punishment vs Discipline”), that’s false. God doesn’t punish us, but He will use our mistakes to shape and teach us (i.e., discipline us). The age-old saying that bad things happen to good people (and vice versa) is true:

There is something else meaningless that occurs on earth: the righteous who get what the wicked deserve, and the wicked who get what the righteous deserve. This too, I say, is meaningless.  ––Ecclesiastes 8:14

In Hebrew, the word hevel is used, and can also be translated as “futile.” It’s a theme we see throughout Ecclesiastes, and in the later life of Solomon. (A guy who had everything but realized it meant very little outside of God.) And there lies the brutal truth, man of God: terrible things happen to some of the best people we know.

The long dark hand of tragedy touches us all; it’s that thing called the human condition. People much smarter than me have been wrestling with the problem for millennia, including Solomon. Theologians call it theodicy: the challenge of trying to reconcile belief in a loving God with the existence of evil.

Today’s verse is spoken by Job’s friend, Eliphaz, who says that men are born to trouble as sure as a fire’s sparks fly upward. True, but I believe there’s an unintended gem of wisdom buried here, and it’s the most important thing we can take away from a brush with tragedy: When terrible things beyond our control happen to us, God will walk with us through the fires of adversity. And if we are willing to submit ourselves to Him amidst the pain, He will use that situation to refine us—just as wood burns in fire and sparks fly upward. Man of God, the Lord didn’t throw you into the fire, but if you turn the situation over to Him, He will use your story to light up the darkness around you—just like sparks rising on a dark night.

Father, burn away all the unnecessary things in my life and use the sparks from the fire of my adversities to point people to You.