Today’s reading is Job’s final summing up of his situation, closing with the line “The words of Job are ended” (Job 31:40). Right in the middle of this three-chapter-long speech comes the heart of Job’s cry. “My soul is poured out within me; days of affliction have taken hold of me. The night racks my bones, and the pain that gnaws me takes no rest” (30:16-18).

Why has this happened? God has done it: “With violence he seizes my garment; he grasps me by the collar of my tunic. He has cast me into the mire, and I have become like dust and ashes” (30:19-20). Before the power of God, Job tells us, we are picked up and tossed into the mud; in the end, we are nothing more than dust and ashes, blown on the wind. The dust-and-ashes doctrine is a better answer than the simplistic concept of Elihu, Bildad, and Zophar, that wealth means God is blessing you because you’re good, and disaster means God is punishing you because you’re bad. But as we’ll see in the next few days, the dust-and-ashes doctrine doesn’t quite tell the story, either.

We should notice that even though Job recognizes that God has wrecked his life, he still prays. It is not a pretty prayer. “I cry to you and you do not answer me; I stand, and you merely look at me. You have turned cruel to me; with the might of your hand you persecute me. You lift me up on the wind, you make me ride on it, and you toss me about in the roar of the storm. I know that you will bring me to death” (30:20-23).

Part of Job’s righteousness is this. He has suffered great loss; he knows that this devastation has come from God’s hand; he has listened to his friends insist that it’s because of his secret sins even though he knows that isn’t the reason; he has prayed for relief, he has prayed for wisdom; and he’s got nothing from God in reply: and somehow he is still praying. Most of us would have given up and walked away; we would have rejected prayer and religion and God; we would have taken Mrs. Job’s advice to reject God and die (2:9). In Job’s anguish his words may be ragged and painful: but he’s still praying.

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Help us keep praying, O God. In the midst of heartbreak and anguish, help us keep praying. When we are baffled by the circumstances and wonder where you are, help us keep praying. Even when all we hear from you is silence, help us keep praying.

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