We Can Handle It

 Job 7:  1-4, 6-7
Mark 1:  29-39
Fifth Sunday after Epiphany
February 8, 2015
TEXT: "... and He cured many who were suffering"                    Mark 1:33

           There is a story about a couple who had been married for more than thirty years.  One evening, when the husband returned from work, he found his wife packing.  "What in the world are you doing?" he  asked.  "I can't handle it anymore," she replied.  "I'm tired of all the bickering and arguing and complaining that's been going on between us all these years, I'm leaving."  Whereupon, the startled husband suddenly dashed to the bedroom, pulled a suitcase out of the closet, filled it with his belongings and ran after his wife, saying, "I can't handle it any more either.  I'm going with you."

           The Old Testament Book of Job tells the story of a man named Job who is at a point in his life where he can't handle it anymore.  He expresses himself as a man without hope.  In Chapter Seven he complains that life is a "drudgery" ... that his eyes "will never see joy again" ... that he can but "lament the bitterness of his soul" (Jb. 7:1,7,11). 

 Job's problem, as we discover later, was that he had not turned himself over to God.  He kept on complaining, and challenging God, instead of listening to God.  But his problem is resolved thirty-seven chapters later when he confesses to the Lord,

 I know You are all-powerful...I am the man who obscured your designs
with my empty-headed words.
I have been holding forth on matters I cannot understand, on marvels beyond
me and my knowledge (Job 42:2-3).