He Gives, He Takes & He’s Good (Job’s Song)
The Story
Job is one of my favorite characters in the Bible. I love his honesty, his willingness to voice his doubts, to lay out his questions before an omnipotent God and make bare his faltering faith.
Job gives us permission to do the same. Not just because he was willing to talk honest when he was weakest, but because we hear this dialogue. His questions were received by a God Who is willing to listen and talk back. Michael Card said it most beautifully when he said something like this, “Nowhere in Scripture do we find God saying, ‘How dare you speak to me that way?’ Instead we find a God who invites the conversation.” The book of Job is a beautiful example of the kind of conversation you can expect when you present your unanswerable questions to an incomprehensible God.
I was visiting a camp in Alabama in June of 2014 when I heard a preacher give a sermon from the 23rd chapter of Job. At the time I was still developing and gathering ideas for Treasures of Darkness (Cri de Cœur had just released a few months prior). Following the sermon, I started working on this song in my camp dorm room. The verses flowed relatively easily, but that’s all it was — just an endless stream of verses with way too many words and thoughts and no central theme. I pulled most of what I wrote straight from Job 23.
My plan was for this song to be the title track for Treasures of Darkness, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of the many versions I played with.
I pulled some of my songwriting friends in to try to get their input. I made a several-hour trek to southern Indiana to have Sam Stuart — a listener who’d exchanged song ideas with me for some time — give me his opinion. As I sang the never-ending entourage of verses for Sam he stopped me mid-verse (“That someone would carve my words in stone”) and said, “Right there. The chorus should go right there.”
I sent the song to another songwriting friend of mine, Josiah Wheeler. It sounded much different than what you hear now and had a completely different title and chorus.
It wasn’t until June of 2018 (four years after I started the song) that I fell upon the chorus of a combination of ten simple words, “He gives, takes, binds, breaks, calms, shakes, and he’s good.”
I almost daily return to a moment in my own journey when, like Job, I quite literally collapsed to my knees under the crushing weight of unexpected news — news of a young death, and to me, what seemed to be defeat. My entire body shook uncontrollably. Like Job, I was forced to my knees. Unlike Job, I did not worship in that place of disbelief and unspeakable doubt.
But I did bring my pleadings to a God Who is good. I pled with Him for the words to be a mistake. I trembled as the prayer came involuntarily, “No God. No God, please don’t let it be true. No God. Not Josiah. Not Josiah.” The memory is seared in my mind and whether or not I should be past it by now, I relive that moment daily.
You have your own memories, your own wrestlings with a God you do not understand — the pain is real and the emotions resurface and it’s a daily lesson in surrender as we try to reconcile our images of what we thought would be with what is now becoming.
I challenge you to bring your questions to a God Who “invites the conversation.”
He gives, He takes, and He’s good…
The Song
He Gives, He Takes, & He’s Good (Job’s Song)
1. He lost all he loved within a moment
Children, possessions, health, and mirth
Wondering why, Job knelt and worshiped
In fathomless pain, he spoke these words
“Oh, that I knew where I knew where I might find him
That I could stand before His throne
That I might ask him what He’s doing
That someone would carve my words in stone
Ch. But He gives and He takes
And He’s good
He binds and He breaks
And He’s good
He calms, He shakes
And He is good
He gives, He takes
And He’s good
2. I look on ahead but I can’t find Him
I can’t see His movings at my side
I turn around but I don’t see Him
Only the deepening of night
But I will not be silenced by this darkness
Nor deep gloom which covers me
Even now I feel His presence
I know He’s here, though He’s unseen
I sense He’s working in this darkness
He knows the path that I now take
Not one word has failed of His good promise
I know His hand makes no mistakes
Ch. And He gives and He takes
And He’s good
He binds and He breaks
And He’s good
He calms, He shakes
And He is good
He gives, He takes
And He’s good
Image credit: myjewishlearning.com