Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 184 · July 3
Shall He Live Again
“If a man die, shall he live again? all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come.”
Have you ever asked God a question you were afraid had no answer? Job asks one of the oldest questions in the Bible, and he asks it in a chapter that seems to have already answered no.
He begins with a tree: "For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, that it will sprout again." Cut a tree down to the stump, and it may still send up new shoots. Then the comparison breaks down: "But man dieth, and wasteth away: yea, man giveth up the ghost, and where is he?" Two verses later the door seems to shut: "till the heavens be no more, they shall not awake, nor be raised out of their sleep."
So when Job asks, "If a man die, shall he live again?" his own words have already pointed to the answer no. Yet he speaks of waiting: "all the days of my appointed time will I wait, till my change come." He waits for the very thing he has just said does not happen. Then he says something strange and hopeful, straight to God: "Thou shalt call, and I will answer thee."
Others in Scripture ask the same question. Psalm 88 asks it from the same low place: "Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee?" No answer comes there either, and that psalm ends in darkness.
Then Isaiah says something new: "Thy dead men shall live," and "Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust." Daniel adds a part that sobers everyone: "many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt."
At last the question is answered face to face. Martha's brother Lazarus has lain in the grave four days when she goes out to meet Jesus on the road. She has the teaching right, but it does not comfort her: "I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day." Jesus answers her with Himself: "I am the resurrection, and the life." Then He asks her, "Believest thou this?"
Job never heard that sentence. He had a question, a wait with no end date, and the courage to say it to God. Nothing in the book treats his asking as unbelief, and in the end God Himself says that Job had spoken of Him what is right. The answer Job waited for has now been given in Jesus, so you can bring your hardest questions to God as well, and wait on the One who has already come out of the grave.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 184 is Gracious and Compassionate (Psalm 145:8).