Cluck, Cluck!

Friday morning, August 8, 2008 (080808)[much cooler than yesterday!],
Can you bear another quote from Mason's book? "When it comes to the topic of physical pain, people who are not actually experiencing such pain can entertain all kinds of noble theories about it. As long as it is happening to someone else, pain is but an abstraction, a theological conundrum, an unfortunate blight on an otherwise fairly tolerable world. But as soon as the Devil so much as touches a person's own body, the whole picture changes. Then suffering becomes the very opposite of an abstraction: it becomes an enormity, a concrete reality so overwhelming that it has the power to engulf all other reality, to eclipse all other thought except the thought itself" (p. 41).
This is what Satan said to God concerning Job: "'Skin for skin!' Satan replied. 'A man will give all he has for his own life. But stretch out your hand and strike his flesh and bones, and he will surely curse you to your face'" (Job 2:4-5). Humm – sometimes Satan doesn't know what he is talking about nor does he know about whom he is talking and that is a good thing!
Now, listen to what Mason says: "It could almost be said that the sufferer's knowledge of pain is of the same order as the believer's knowledge of God and that this is why the Devil exploits pain as a prime vehicle of temptation . . . It is not accident that the place where the Lord and the Devil themselves join ultimate battle—the cross—is a rack of torture" (p. 42).
As you probably know (if you have been a Christian for any length of time), the Devil has several goals that he feverishly attempts to reach, not the least of which are the following: (1) to cause us to lose everything we have; (2) to cause us to lose our identity (who we really are). As is evident in the Scriptures, he did cause Job to lose everything he had (with God's permission, of course, and thankfully!) but rather than coming "unglued" and cursing God and running down the road throwing beer bottles at mail boxes, Job worshipped [The Lord gives and the Lord takes away; blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21b)]. Rest assured that this was not a knee-jerk reaction, but a response to a lifetime of practicing worshipping, that's correct—practicing worshipping.
What about Job's identity? Was Satan able to rob him of it? No! Absolutely not! Oh, on several occasions, it seems that he had lost, but keep reading because he did not. Job struggled and hurt and cried and did everything else that anyone would have done, but He refused to relent, when it came to his identity (Thank God that He has the reins in His hands!).
As best I know, the only anesthetic for pain, the kind of pain that Job endured, the kind of pain that is comparable to having open heart surgery without anesthesia, is trust—trust in THE SURGEON! This is what Mason said: "When there is stabbing pain, trust cries out. It is only mistrust, fear, and suspicion that keeps silent" (p. 58).
Even so (and just for the record), I am not standing in the "Please give me pain" line; I am too much of a "chicken" for that! "Cluck, cluck!"