“And the LORD restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends” Job 42:10
First of all, let me be perfectly clear that I do not read morning prayer because I think I am a good person. I read morning prayer because I want to be a better person, and I don’t stand a chance under my own power. “Reading” morning prayer, by the way, is a fancy way of saying “saying.” Maybe it’s because it is in a book, specifically The Book of Common Prayer, that sometimes people call it “reading.” Whatevs.
I read morning prayer because I am not usually in good enough awakeness first thing in the morning to get some sort of prayer and meditation on. I could read something else, like Newsweek or the twitters, but then I get distracted or too fired up or whatever. The Book of Common Prayer conveniently puts some readings and psalms and whatnot before the actual praying. It gives a brother the chance to have some coffee before initiating that constant contact, and given that the reading is all Bible-ish, it puts me in the right frame of mind for when the time does come.
All of that is by way of explaining how I came to be reading Job in the darkness for the last few weeks. The book of Job has been the reading from the Hebrew Bible for a little while now. (What to read when and how much can get confusing. Fortunately sites like this one and this one have made the chore a whole lot easier.) I was pretty psyched because I love the smack down Jehovah puts of Job and his friends at the end. “Where were you when the boundaries of the sea were fixed” and all that. Classic.
If you don’t remember Job’s friends, just suffice it to say that they are the original frienemies. According to them, it’s somehow Job’s fault that all of this is happening to him. Job knows that he has never cursed God, but these guys think he is lying. That’s not the worst part, though. Even after all these insults, after the boils and the lice, the death and destruction, after all of that, God wants one thing from Job. God wants him to pray for the shmucks he calls friends.
I think that would be about the time that I would curse God. And I am not just talking about “Lord, I curse the.” I think I might suggest that God do something which is beyond the physical power of any human being, but which God, being God, could probably pull off. I would probably have been smote pretty quickly in Old Testament days. Job, on the other hand, is not that kind of guy.
Job is, if you ask me, the original self-actualizing human being. You know Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, right? Sometimes I get confused and think that I have to have all the bottom layers taken care of for myself — the money, the house, the car, the clothes — before I can think about anything else. That’s not how God rolls with Job though. Nor is it how Job, as a faithful person, rolls with God. As Job is compassionate toward his friends, his fortunes are restored, not the other way around.
I find that this is true in philanthropy. Some people think that they will one day have enough money for themselves and can give some away. There will, in fact, never be enough. Even when there is enough, it’s not enough, except, ironically, for those who are willing to give it away. I have found that the truly philanthropic people I know are some of the happiest I have ever met. The Lord has restored their fortunes, again and again.