for emotions as weak (the Stoic error), would expect in Job an unflinching fortitude in the midst of such loss and pain. Job rightly grieves his bereavement; he is authentically depressed by his illness. He is human. The untrammelled serenity which some prescribe as the goal of ‘victorious living’ is a negation of whole areas of our experience as God has made us. Job lives fully. The calm attained by the psalmist (Ps. 73:23–28), and by Job also at the end, was reached only through, and as the fruit
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