After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before.
Job 42:10 (NIV)
Job Prayed for His Friends
She’s the first one in the building at five, and for the next twenty minutes the mirrors stay fogged and the place is hers. She likes that part. By a quarter past she’s set the rack, wiped down a bench somebody left sticky, chalked the date at the top of the whiteboard, and written four names under it for the six o’clock.
Two of those four spent the fall telling the board she was running the place wrong, and one of them put it in a letter she’s read more times than she’d admit. She drops a lighter bar on the rack for the one with the bad shoulder and writes the weight next to her name.
Job’s three friends had spent the whole argument explaining to him why a man loses everything. The Lord tells Eliphaz that he’s angry with him and his two friends, because they haven’t spoken the truth about him as Job has, and then he tells them what to do about it. They were to take seven bulls and seven rams to Job and sacrifice a burnt offering for themselves, and Job would pray for them, and God would accept his prayer.
After Job had prayed for his friends, the Lord restored his fortunes and gave him twice as much as he had before. God set the whole arrangement up, from the bulls to the praying, and he said in advance that the prayer would be accepted.
Job was asked to pray for the men who had made his worst year worse, and he did it. Nothing in the account says he had forgiven them by then or felt any different about them in the morning. He prayed because God told him to, and God accepted it.
The asking came from God, and it came while Job still had nothing, before a single sheep had come back to him.
A Prayer to Remember
Right now there are two people I’d rather not think about, God, and I can feel myself deciding not to. I’m not going to pretend that’s a small thing, or that it got that way overnight. Put their names in my mouth this morning.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
