A man at wit's end | Previous Challenge Entry

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TITLE: A man at wit's end | Previous Challenge Entry
By david arroyo
02/19/14
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There once lived a man who sat in the dust, being incessantly tormented in flesh and soul. This had not always been the situation. There was a day, like a dream of the night now, when this man seemed to possess the very world… family, riches, fame, strength,vitality. It was as though an invisible and impenetrable fortress surrounded him. No evil, it would seem, could draw near his dwelling. Yet now, here he sits in the dust of the Earth scraping his flesh with pot shards in an attempt to ease, if just for a moment, the torture within. His body, once vibrant and strong, is now covered in boils. The stench that comes from his flesh, flesh that seems to be rotting on his now brittle bones, smells putrid enough to cause any unfortunate passerby to reflexively gag. The mere sight of this broken man would cause all but the most hardened of hearts to pause with intense grief and sorrow.

What had he done to deserve such a judgment from God? His sin must be great, reaching to the heights of heaven. Surely this man deserves what’s come to him. Justice has been irrevocably set into the fabric of existence, one cannot escape the penetrating gaze of the Eternal Righteousness. This man must have mocked the Most High with his greed, his oppression of the poor and weak, he must be a man of extreme perversion, lusting after women who are not his, for why else would God snuff out the very lights of his life, the fruit of his loins that grew in the womb of his wife. His wife, indeed, must know that he is a wicked man for she refuses to give him comfort, insisting instead that he curse God and be done with his sorry and futile existence.

For all of the loss and the bodily pain he endured nothing compared to the agony that saturated his spiritual world. For he knew that he was blameless, no matter what any mere man might say. His love and faithfulness to His God had been greater than his love for any other. He had entered into a covenant with his own self, he swore to never look at a woman with lust in his eyes. He had treated men with equity, charity and with the utmost of integrity. Nevertheless, here he sat, his mind forcibly being bent to its uttermost. Who would have thought that a mind could bend to such an extreme angle without breaking? Accusations against his God accosted his dying soul, night and day, day and night, for it all blended into one. One long, dark night of the soul.

In the midst of this unspeakable pain and loneliness his only respite was a flicker of enduring hope that there existed one who would redeem him, one who would plead his case before the seemingly impenetrable holy and just nature of the Divine Being. These true and noble thoughts, and words, began to spark in his heart, like a flicker of fire that would eventually ignite within his very bones. He raised his frail voice with an inner fortitude and forcefulness that startled those who surrounded him, his eyes becoming fierce with passionate conviction, “I know" he nearly roared," that my Redeemer Lives, and that in the end He will stand upon the Earth. And after my skin has been destroyed, yet in my flesh I will see God. I myself will see Him- I, and not another. How my heart yearns within me!” (Job 19:25-27) Through it all, it would seem, this great man of suffering, Job, endured because he knew, hoping against hope, that he would, one day, stand before the Lord, his Redeemer.

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