Of triteness and sorrow

In a story one can always anticipate a conflict or a plot twist of some sort, but in life, everyone's life is wonderful except for you, right?  Only cookbooks get by without some sort of a crisis, but in the world of fiction, biography, and history, there is always a crisis, so too every life has some hidden loss, fear, pain, injury, crisis, or stain.  Celebrities abuse drugs, get into legal trouble, or fall from grace when we all assume their lives, surrounded as they are by fame and money, must be perfect.  But there are no perfect lives in this imperfect world which is why each life is a story.  There is no story or life without crisis.  I used to hate the interminable stretch of time in 'Pride and Prejudice' after Lydia ran away while poor Jane and Elizabeth lingered on what seemed like forever in their misery and disgrace when they should have been happily married chapters ago, but then the book would be over and we would have none of the happy triumph of overcoming the greatest of odds!  But what misery, what despair do we suffer while our heroes linger in such unknowing?  Happily, in a novel or movie we can get to the end much quicker than do our 'heroes' in everyday life.  Some of us linger on for years in doubt, pain, worry, and fear without any hope of rescue or release.  Some will never know this side of death what all the misery and inevitable coping with it was for.  And loath are we to hear the words, 'it was meant to be,' or ,'it will all make sense one day,' or ,'there will be joy because of it,' or ,'it is just life,' or whatever your least favorite trite saying.

Suffering, pain, despair, do not make sense while we are in the midst of them and often not when we are past them.  Job never got a direct answer from God as to the purpose of his suffering, nor did his wife, but whereas the poor, bereaved lady ended in despair ('curse God and die'), Job patiently though miserably waited faithfully, certain that 'his redeemer lived,' and whatever betide, 'blessed be the Name of the Lord.'  Perhaps he suffered what he did to give encouragement and hope to us, the readers of his tale many long years since he is dust, though he never knew the benefit of his misery?  Whatever the reason or lack there of, we can hope as Job did, that despite our deepest angst and misery, there is a Redeemer, One who understands, One who has suffered and will stand by us in our own suffering.  It may not give immediate relief from the sorrow or meaning to the misery, but it gives comfort to the soul, a hope for a morning that will never fade nor the joy in it.  'The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Blessed be the Name of the Lord!'