Somewhere around two thousand years before the birth of Christ there lived a very influential man. He was “the greatest of all men of the east” (Job 1.3) and his name was Job. Job was a good man “fearing God and turning away from evil” (Job 1.1).
Tragedy befell this good man. He lost all his money and possessions. His seven children died in a hurricane. Then he was stricken with “boils from the sole of his foot to the crown of his head” (Job 2.7). If this was not bad fortune enough, his wife urged Job, “Curse God and die” (Job 2.9). He sat in a pile of ashes scraping the oozing sores of his diseased body with the fragment of a broken clay pot (Job 1.8). Job was a broken man. Yet, according to Job 1.22, “through all this Job did not sin nor did he blame God.”
