Months have passed with Job in constant agony when his three friends arrive on the scene, desiring to share his grief and hopefully ease his pain. What they find is worse than they had been told. They do not even recognize their friend, who has changed so dramatically since they last fellowshipped with him. They weep loudly and show outward signs of mourning, but then sit silently for a week, not speaking a word to him, though they had travelled long distances to share words of comfort with him. It seems he is too far gone, and what was meant to be a refreshing of Job's spirit turns into a wake for a man not yet dead, but treated as if he were. He truly seems all alone in his pain, for not even his friends can revive him. In this, we are drawn to another who suffered for our sins alone, exposed between heaven and earth as he, abandoned by almost all and removed from everyone else, cries out to his Father, "Why have you forsaken me?" No one suffered greater, and no one experienced loneliness more deeply, and all that to redeem those who made his rejection necessary. May we praise him this week and always for his sacrifice on our behalf!

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