At the end of the book, the Lord restores Job’s wealth, but he never gets his kids back. That’s death, folks. It assures us that no one actually lives happily ever after in this life. A void will always be there.

On October 17, 2020, I led a graveside service at 10 am for a man who died too soon.

He was in his 40s.

At 11:45 police arrived at our house with news about our son, who had just died too sooner.

He was 20.

It was a sunny day. The morning was crisp and just cool enough for blankets at the graveside. By the time I got home, things were warming up for a perfect fall day! My wife, Jeni, had been to the Farmer’s Market and had just texted that she was in the checkout line at Stein Mart, having scoured their Going-Out-of-Business Sale—another casualty of COVID-19.

After changing from my graveside suit to my Saturday skivvies, I turned on a football game that interested me little, but any college game was fitting for this fall day. At 7 pm, Jeni’s team would face a conference-rival in a battle of top-fives. My team was idle, so until 7:00 any game would make for sufficient background noise. One of the secrets of our happy 30-year marriage is a mutual passion for college football.

As the sun rose a few hours earlier, I sat in a local coffee shop, putting finishing touches on the Sunday School lesson. All that remained were some PowerPoint slides and a few edits. I was right where I wanted to be going into Sunday when I would rise while it was still dark and finalize things.

The rest of this day, though, was for Jeni, me, and football.

At 11:45, someone pounded on our front door. Lainey (our yellow lab) and I startled.

“Shhhhhh!” I signaled, having zero interest in answering. We weren’t expecting anyone, and I didn’t feel like talking to strangers.

Then more hard raps came, so I looked through the peephole. Two people. Probably someone on the campaign trail.

But they stayed. So I checked my doorbell cam: one cop in uniform; another in an open flannel shirt, with some kind of police T-shirt underneath.

So I opened the door… to a new life we never asked for.

After establishing my identity, the plain-clothes officer said, “I’m afraid I have some bad news about your son.”

Kyle had died sometime during the night, due to what appeared to be an accidental overdose. From all appearances, it is likely he had taken something laced with a fatal dose of fentanyl, a tragic decision far too common these days.

It has been almost 90 days, and we are still trying to find our way.

Thousands of years ago, another man named Job got several knocks on his door from those bearing awful news. The worst news, though, was ten times more severe than ours. We lost one child; Job lost all ten of his. We had our remaining children for mutual comfort. Job had none.

Though I have read and studied Job many times, I have been more intrigued than ever since Kyle’s death. I find myself especially impressed by Job’s initial response to the horror of childlessness.

Chapter one, verse 20, shows us a deeply emotional response of this heartbroken father—not one of distant stoicism, but of sharp emotion and grief. He first tore his clothes, an ancient practice, symbolizing the rending of one’s own heart (Joel 2:13). He then shaved his head, removing any hint of personal glory or adornment (much like Jeni not wearing makeup to Kyle’s funeral; Jer. 7:29; Micah 1:16). Then the text tells us that Job fell to the ground in humility; at the lowest of lows. His face kissed the dust. His life would never be the same, and it might have seemed that his hanging head would never rise again.

When the police first told me of Kyle’s death, I felt a dark emptiness, as if light and life had been sucked from my soul. That was it for our precious 20-year-old. There would be no second-chances, no mulligans, no do-overs. We would not even have the chance to say goodbye. Our son was dead, and I still had to call Jeni, who remained across town. What would I say? How would I say it? How would we then tell our remaining family members? Next to seeing Kyle in a casket a few days later, this would be the most horrific hour of our lives. A busy parking lot in Edmond would soon be filled with Jeni’s cries and screams. My 20-minute squad-car ride to her would seem endless.

Job’s grief must have been all the more intense, but he had no other family members to share the burden with; just his wife. Everyone else was gone. Forever.

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