In our ABIDE reading plan, we spent almost two months with Job, probably long enough that his bleak circumstances were starting to weigh us down too! Perhaps we were glad to move on when his story mercifully came to an end. But in the first part of Psalm 102, it feels like a reprise on the book of Job! Apparently the psalmist has also spent considerable time reading about the righteous sufferer, for his lament echoes many of the same themes. When Job was bemoaning his sad condition, he said, “For affliction does not come from the dust, nor does trouble sprout from the ground, but man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward” (Job 5:6-7). Job was saying that each generation of human beings is born to suffer. It’s like we are all merely a bunch of logs thrown upon the blazing fire of life to be consumed and blown away. The psalmist can relate. He says, “For my days pass away like smoke, and my bones burn like a furnace” (v 3). This man also feels the heat of his trials and knows that he is vanishing as quickly as smoke from the fire. Or changing the image, he says he is withering away like summer grass (v 4, 11). The psalmist is sick enough that he has lost his appetite (v 4), but this is no 24-hour virus. As a result of his affliction, he is now reduced to skin and bones (v 5). And that’s not all that is bothering him. He is sleepless and depressed. He feels isolated and rejected, “like a desert owl of the wilderness” or “like a lonely sparrow on the housetop” (v 6-7). He is the object of no one’s tender care or compassion. Instead, his enemies mock him when he is down (v 8). It all brings him to tears (v 9), and yet he knows that a sovereign God is ultimately responsible for his condition. He speaks of God tossing him aside because of His “indignation and anger” (v 10), and this shows awareness of sin on his part. Yet nowhere in the psalm does he mention his sin specifically or confess it. So at one level, he can’t say he doesn’t deserve this (for we all sin and merit God’s righteous wrath). But the psalmist has no idea what he has done that God would be afflicting him in this particular way. Does this not sound like Job, all over again? Job also knew he was not sinless, but he could not understand why he was being singled out for such intense suffering. Thankfully, like Job, the psalmist is still talking to God, begging for answers and crying out for mercy (v 1-2). Passages like this remind us that we are not alone in our suffering; others have sought the LORD in the midst of severe trials. And if life is all good for us right now, perhaps this text can help us feel the pain of those who are troubled, that we might share their burdens. For further meditation: