Biting My Tongue

Job 1:1-22
Acts 8:26-40
John 6:16-27
There is a common theme in these passages that relates to trusting in God for one’s deliverance. But more than that there is a willingness to remain silent on one’s own behalf and to trust God to provide what is right and what is necessary. Job suffers such a devastating loss (actually one loss right after another) that the account ends up sounding almost farcical. How could so much violence be done to one family so quickly? Sheep, camels, oxen all killed or stolen? Children killed? Yet, “In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing” (Job 1:22). Likewise, it is the words of the prophet Isaiah that the Ethiopian is reading (aloud, as was the custom of the time) when Philip joins him on the road through Gaza (Acts 8:32f). In the face of humiliation and injustice the Lord’s servant, “does not open his mouth” (quote from Isaiah 53:7-8). Neither Job nor the servant of the Lord in Isaiah are willing to cry out initially, to take up their own causes, to demand that things be set right! How is this possible?

Jesus offers the proper perspective in John’s account. “Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you” (John 6:27). Frankly, at a time in my life when I feel that my loved ones are being treated unfairly, when I see others doing what I believe to be wrong and apparently getting away with it, I want so much to cry out. I want to make a fuss, to speak words of anger and derision. I want to hurt others the way that I’ve been hurt. But neither Job nor the servant of the Lord in Isaiah resorts to such activity, and Jesus reminds me that I may well “win some battles” but that such effort is wasted because the food it produces does not endure. So I will try to bite my tongue. I will try to refrain from speaking out of anger. I will try to live as Jesus teaches me.

Prayer: Lord, I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips, but my eyes have seen your grace. Help me to be a better person and to trust in the food that endures for eternal life. Amen.