Sleeping Maiden

Janie scowled at him. “I’ve lost enough. Uncle Bill. Mama and Pop, and little Joey. And now our home. I don’t know what I feel the most, but I think it’s Danny. And I caused that. I was reading in Job this morning. He lost so much. I can see the first part of what he said. ‘The Lord giveth.’ He certainly gave us a lot. We only had a wagon, and he gave us a farm. Then came the hard part. ‘The Lord taketh away.’ That part hurt. Family members taken by sickness was not something I knew anything about. I counted Uncle Bill as family. I don’t like death. When those men were threatening to hang Luke and Matthew, I think I rebelled against what the Lord had allowed. But I just shot the hands that held life and death in them. And then to be turned out of the home I thought was ours. Cheated out of it, really. But, Pastor Tom, then Job blessed the Lord. I’m nowhere near ‘Blessed be the Name of the Lord.’ I have my health. I have my brothers and sister. I have a bit of money and gold. But I drove away the man I love.” Her voice rose to a wail as she said, “Oh, Pastor Tom, I love him! To lose him hurts so much, and I did it myself!”

"The LORD gave, and the LORD has taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD." Janie Stoneman rejoiced in the first portion of that statement from the book of Job. Then came the second part. In the struggle and despair that followed, she learned the lessons of faith that would allow her to grow to be able to join in the third portion of Job's response to calamity.