Our town has been hit by a lot of illness lately, more than just your common winter cold or flu.
People are coming down left, right and centre with horrible chest infections, which in many cases have turned to pneumonia.
About 6 weeks ago one of my friends turned up to our homegroup and confessed she was finding every day life a real struggle. Just your normal things, kids, house, husband working late. It was all starting to take it's toll. Of course being the lovely Christian people we are, we prayed for her and immediately offered our help where we could, sharing school/club pick-ups etc.
Little did she or we know what the following weeks would bring, from that date to this 4 of their 6 family members have had pneumonia - two of them hospitalised. She is still sane - just about!
Around the same time 6 weeks ago, I decided I wanted to read the Bible chronologically. So I started through Job. Good timing. God's clever like that you see. We all said we'd be good friends and support her without having a clue what that was about to involve.
Job's friends thought he must have done something or had an unconfessed sin which had brought about all his trouble. That is an easy reaction for us to have today, I myself in the past have thought "God, what did I do, why is all this happening?"
Job hadn't done anything, he was right with God and faithful to Him, but God did not enlighten him as to why he was suffering disaster after disaster. Job, got annoyed with his friends for indicating he must have brought it on himself, and questioned God.
My friend is a very wise, loving and caring Christian person. I know she must have faults somewhere, but I haven't seen them! I'm glad I was reading Job because it helped me to not distort my view of why people go through periods of suffering.
We may never fully understand in this life why some of us go through what we go through. Sometimes after the event it becomes clear. Other times it's just a time to get through and forget about. If you know God, that will be enough, you will not need to know 'why?'
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