This is Elihu speaking, quoting back to Job what Job had basically been saying through the last several chapters.
God has found fault with me. He treats me like His enemy.
Job had been working through his pain out loud. He had been wrestling. Wondering why God was so far. Wondering why all of this had happened to him. Wondering if God had it out for him personally.
And his younger friend Elihu finally speaks up and calls it out.
Not in a mean way. But in a clear way.
He is basically saying Job, do you hear yourself? You are talking like God has singled you out. Like the God of the universe has decided to make you His enemy.
Elihu goes on to remind Job that God is bigger than any one of us. That He is not pacing around heaven picking on people. That He is not consumed with making any one human's life miserable. That He has His own purposes, His own justice, His own ways, and that we are not the center of His universe in the way our pain sometimes makes us feel like we are.
That hit me.
Because how often do we do this?
We go through a hard season and we start to make it about us in a way that is not even true. God is picking on me. God has it out for me. Why is God doing this to me? Why does this always happen to me? Why is God allowing this in my life?
We make the suffering personal in a way that puts us at the center of it.
And in doing that, we accidentally elevate ourselves higher than we should.
Because the truth is, hard things happen in this world all the time. They happen to everyone at some point. Sickness. Loss. Disappointment. Heartbreak. We are not the first to go through it. We will not be the last. The world is broken, and the brokenness touches everyone eventually.
When we frame our suffering as God is targeting me, we make ourselves the main character of a story that has billions of pages.
Elihu was not being harsh. He was just being honest.
Job, you are a person God loves. You are not a person God is out to get. The way you are talking about this is not actually true about God or about you.
That is a good check for me.
When I am in a hard season, am I assuming God is against me? Am I letting my pain rewrite what I know to be true about who He is? Am I making the story about how He is treating me, when really the story is much bigger than I can see from where I am sitting?
I can find myself doing this more than I would want to admit.
I get hurt. I get confused. I start to internalize it as God must be upset with me. God is punishing me. God is allowing this because I did something wrong. And while sometimes consequences are real, more often than not, I am just suffering the kind of suffering that happens because the world is broken. Not because God has decided to make me an enemy.
He has not.
The cross proves that pretty clearly.
If God's heart was to make us His enemies, He would not have sent His Son to die for us. The whole story of Scripture is a God who is making a way for us, not against us. Even in seasons that hurt. Even in seasons that confuse us. Even in seasons when we cannot see what He is doing.
Job needed to hear that. So do I.