The day began with the discovery that the dog had diarrhea all over the vestibule to our apartment. I held my breath and cleaned it up.
Then I sat down to hammer out a project that had somehow gone missing from my computer the night before. Three hours later, my laptop froze and I lost the work… again. I vacuumed for a while, half-hoping the recovery file would miraculously uncorrupt itself, but eventually sat down and started over.
That afternoon I received a phone call telling me that I was responsible for $1,232 in calls made on the cell phone my child left in the playground. I’d thought the phone was missing in the house with a dead battery, so hadn’t reported it stolen. The idea of a bill that large simply made me want to sob. I didn’t fight the urge: I cried.
Some days life feels too hard. Sometimes it seems that whatever we do we’ll never get ahead, that the whole world is against us, that we’re caught in a Job-like situation. It’s tempting to despair. But I find it helpful to remember that’s not what Job did after tearing his robe and shaving his head in grief. He set an example I can follow and taught something the world doesn’t teach. He fell to the ground in worship and said:
Naked I came from my mother’s womb,
and naked I will depart,
The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away;
may the name of the Lord be praised. (Job 1:21)
Yes, even on the really, really bad days, may the name of the Lord be praised. On those days let us fall to the ground and worship. It’s the one thing we can do to make any day a good one.
