He is always using the middle chapters

Reading through Job is hard.
It feels so heavy. The deeper you get into the book, the more you think, “God, please lift this darkness! This is TOO MUCH!”
Knowing that satan approached God while patrolling for someone to mess with + God allowed it? Ugh 😔
While always preserving his life, his home + family was taken from him, his health stripped from him, and howling waves of grief filled his soul.
If we are being honest when reading this, we think, “This just seems all too dramatic to be realistic.”
But the truth of life? SO much of it is the hard stuff, the happenings that feel unjust, and the heaviness that living + loving others presents.

Scripture says Job was a righteous man who was fully devoted to God. And yet, no amount of doing or stewarding or believing or surrendering of his life in chapters 1-2 could provide the intimacy that chapters 3-37 provide.
It is the in-between that Job’s character is developed in a way that only suffering can cultivate.
To know that God, Yahweh, can comfort like only He can requires circumstances that ask to be deeply comforted.
To trust that God, Yahweh, can remove, replace, redeem, and restore like only He can asks for situations to feel impossible, spaces to feel hopeless, and suffering to be required.
To know that even when it feels like all has abandoned you but your Heavenly Father never will requires you to look loneliness, despair, and brokenness in the face and know you have not been forsaken.

How many times did Job FEEL weary? How many times did He cry out for new circumstances?
God can!!!!! WHY ISN'T HE?!? Even reading it, you feel this way.

And yet, over + over again, we witness the theme of Job over our lives: God’s protection doesn’t remove perplexity or pain. It often doesn’t resemble preference but it ALWAYS preserves purpose.
He is ALWAYS using the middle chapters.
He may appear silent but He is sustaining.
You are being formed.

For you heard of Him before…but now? Now, you see Him.
Your eyes have seen the mercy + goodness of God in a way that only the valleys can open them.

In chapter 42, God restores Job to better than before.
God’s character is constant; it is yours He must refine 🤍