Some Days...

Job 1:1, 2:1-10

Do any of you know this book?

Some of you know this story better than others, so you'll remember how it starts:

I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there’s gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on my skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

At breakfast Anthony found a Corvette Sting Ray car kit in his breakfast cereal box and Nick found a Junior Undercover Agent code ring in his breakfast cereal box but in my breakfast cereal box all I found was breakfast cereal.

I think I’ll move to Australia.

Alexander gets the worst seat in the car pool, his teacher doesn’t like his drawing or his singing, his best friend says they aren’t best friends anymore, and then Alexander doesn’t get dessert at lunchtime, while all his friends have yummy treats.

Then they go to the dentist, and he’s the only one with a cavity. (He's going to move to Australia before he has to go back to the dentist!) His brother pushes him into a mud puddle, and when their mom comes back Alexander gets in trouble for fighting back and being dirty. He has to get ugly boring shoes because the cool ones don't come in his size. 
And it just keeps going:

There were lima beans for dinner and I hate lima beans.

There was kissing on TV and I hate kissing.
...It was a terrible, horrible, no good very bad day.  

Have you ever had a day like that?

Why do those days happen???  Do you have any ideas?

Well, people have wondered about that for years and years and years and years.  There’s a story in the Bible that comes from 2500 years ago that is about the very same question.  We read a part of that story today.

It’s a story about a man named Job, who has not just one, but a whole LOT of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad days.  He loses his money and his family, and he gets sick with an awful, icky, itchy disease.

In the story, there are lots of ideas about why this might happen.

The story teller thinks that maybe it’s because God is trying to prove that Job is a very good person who will love God no matter what horrible things happen.

That’s one idea, but personally, I don’t think God messes up our lives just to prove something.  The whole Bible tells us God loves us too much for that.

Job’s friends tell him it must be because Job did something really bad.

It’s true that sometimes bad days happen because we do things we know we shouldn’t do.

But Job knows he didn’t do anything bad like that.

So Job decides that he isn’t going to give up until God comes to explain to him just why he’s having a horrible, awful, very bad year.  He calls God, and calls God, and finally God comes.

What do you think God says to Job?

God talks a lot about the wonders of the world - about wind and storm and stars and whales and mammoths and everything else, and finally Job says: "I get it.  It's just too hard to explain or understand." 

The Bible story tells us that maybe it is just too hard to explain why horrible awful no good things happen, and the only thing we can do is to keep on remembering that God loves us, and God will be with us, even when we can’t understand what’s happening.

And that sometimes, "Why?" isn't the right question, but love and trust are always a good answer.

I think that Alexander might have the same answer at the end of his bad day.

When I went to bed Nick took back the pillow he said I could keep and the Mickey Mouse nightlight burned out and I bit my tongue.

The cat wants to sleep with Anthony, not with me.

It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

My mom says some days are like that.

Even in Australia.

Quotations from Judith Viorst, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, illustrated by Ray Cruz. Atheneum Books for Young Readers, New York, NY, 1972