At 9:30 a.m. the following morning, Dr. Pederson’s car pulled into the driveway of the Pearson home. With Steve clinging to the physician’s arm, they entered the house through the back door. Steve found it very welcoming. Mary had cleaned and tidied it up in his absence. They made their way through the kitchen into the living room where with the help of the doctor, Steve installed himself in the big reclining chair which Kay had bought for him a few years earlier. Dr. Pederson covered his lower body and legs with a blanket. Then, on a side table to the right, he left two thermos jugs, one full of icy Seven-Up, the other of warm broth from Mary. He also set the telephone on the side table. He placed Steve’s opened briefcase containing Harold’s Bible on the floor to the left of the chair along with a hospital jar with a lid on it in case he had to use it. Mary had thoughtfully placed on the coffee table in front of the loveseat a wooden lap tray mounted on a cushion which Harold must have used in his last weeks. The physician put it on Steve’s lap where it made a comfortable smooth surface for reading or writing or eating.
“Mary said you can phone her at home any time if you need anything. She’ll be here by 5:00 p.m. If you need to take the edge off your pain, you may take as many of these pills as required, with liquid,” he added, setting a small bottle on the side table next to the Seven-Up.
“Thank you, Doctor. I so appreciate your kindness. I think I have everything I need right here for the whole day. Would you please get Harold’s Bible and the writing tablet from my briefcase and set them on my lap tray before you go?”
“Certainly.”
With that, he placed his hand on Steve’s forehead.
“No fever. You should be all right. Have a good day.”
“I’m sure I will. Good-bye, and thanks again.”
As soon as he was by himself, Steve opened the Bible to the second marker. It was inserted at the beginning of the Book of Job. Chapters One, Two, and Three were highlighted in their entirety. Steve read through them very deliberately.
First he read of Job’s blameless character, of his large and happy family, and of his great wealth. Then he read of a dialog between the Lord and Satan in which a wager was made over Job. Satan claimed that Job’s faith was dependent on God’s favoring him with prosperity and good fortune. The Lord gave Satan the power to take away everything except Job’s life. As a result, in a single day Job lost everything—herds, servants, and family. But he did not lose his faith.
In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.
Next, Steve read about Satan’s response to this failure on his part. He asked for permission to torture Job’s body, certain that this would make him curse God to his face. God gave him that power. “Only spare his life.” Satan immediately went forth and afflicted Job with loathsome sores from head to toe. His wife counseled him to curse God and die, but Job did not sin with his lips.
“This reminds me of something I recall from my Boston days,” Steve said to himself out loud. “Something about Pope Leo XIII falling into a trance just after celebrating Mass and witnessing a dialog between Jesus and Satan in which Satan claimed he could destroy the Church and Jesus gave him a century to try. That, we were told, was why Pope Leo wrote the St. Michael Prayer and commanded it to be prayed by all the faithful at the conclusion of every Mass. How did it go again?…
St. Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray. And do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who prowl throughout the world seeking the ruin of souls.
“I must not have taken that prayer very seriously back then….”
Steve reached for a sip of Seven-Up and went on.
At this point, three of Job’s friends joined forces to come to condole with him and comfort him. His misery was so great that it left them sitting beside him speechless for an entire week.
After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth, bemoaning the fact that he hadn’t died in the womb.
In the next pages, Harold’s markings highlighted Job’s friends’ insistence that some great sin had to be at the root of his misfortune, and that the only way for him to get better was to own up to it. This leads Job to protest his innocence with increasing vigor until he issues a challenge to God Himself to make sense of the cruel disasters that have befallen him for no reason, defying all logic. He wavers between his confidence that God will one day exonerate him and his despair at the prospect that it won’t ever happen. It all comes to a head when Job protests his total innocence and his utter perplexity that God has allowed these calamities to befall him. Then along comes a young man who upbraids both Job and his three friends on the basis that God doesn’t have to answer to any of them, but that if He did choose to answer them, it would silence them all.
And then, circled in red ink, these words:
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.
Steve read no further. Those words took his breath away….
Whatever the Lord may have gone on to say in His answer, the fact that He actually spoke to Job that He reached out to him at all, was what counted. It meant that Job was not abandoned to a meaningless fate, that there was an answer somewhere deep in the counsels of God! And this was all Job needed to know! It is all anyone needs to know! And it led Job to his final confession:
Therefore I have uttered what I did not understand,
things too wonderful for me which I did not know….
I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear,
but now my eye sees thee;
therefore I despise myself,
and repent in dust and ashes.
“O Jesus! That could be me!”
Steve closed the Bible, folded his hands over it, and laid his forehead on his hands, rocking back and forth in silent wonder.
Then the Lord answered Job out of the whirlwind.
Satan’s game was over.