Some of It's Magic, Some of It's Tragic

He went to Paris looking for answers
To questions that bothered him so
He was impressive, young and aggressive
Saving the world on his own.
But the warm Summer breezes
The French wines and cheeses
Put his ambition at bay
And Summers and Winters
Scattered like splinters
And four or five years slipped away.

That was the first verse of a song by Jimmy Buffett called "He Went to Paris." I don't quite know why I like the song so much, but last night I was driving home from church and just got the hankering to hear it. So I stuck in the CD, cranked up the radio and sang at the top of my lungs all the way home, twice. Maybe you need to know the rest of the song, in the next verse he goes to England and marries a lady named Kim, they have a good life and a son. So he locks up all the questions he had and they live in the country and 20 years go by. Then the war comes and his wife and son both die. He is left with only one eye. As he is crying he remembers the questions that he had that he never got answered, so he jumps the ocean and lives in the islands now, fishing and drinking. But if you ask him, he'll smile and say:
"Some of it's magic, some of it's tragic
But I had a good life all the way."
http://members.aol.com/_ht_a/jimmybufettrules/songsbyheart.html#he (if you want to read the whole thing)

Isn't that the attitude that we should have? Last night I started reading the book of Job in the Bible. If you don't know the story of Job here is a brief summary: Job is a pretty wealthy guy, one of the top guys back in his day. He had 10 kids, lots of land, animals, and servants. At the beginning of the book Satan goes before God and God tells him hey have you seen my servant Job? There is no one as righteous as him and blameless. And Satan says that the only reason Job loves God and serves him is because God has blessed Job so much, but Satan says that if God takes all that away Job will turn his back on God and curse him. So God gives Satan permission to do whatever he wants but only do nothing to Job himself. So all Job's kids die, his servants, his animals, everything is taken from him. But he still wont curse God. He thought is "Should we accept good from God and not bad?" So then Job himself gets really sick, to the point he would want to die, but still he didn't curse God. That all happens in the 1st 2 chapters, the rest of the book is about his 3 friends coming and talking to him about what happened and why and then finally at the end God himself speaks to Job and Job regains all he had plus twice more.
Ok, so now that we know the story of Job, I'm going to tie that into the song, somehow. All this stuff happened to Job and yet he never turned his back on God; in the song, that guy lost everything he had and now lives in the Islands (which wouldn't be bad) but even so he says he had a good life all the way. Shouldn't we all strive to be like this? (This is more directed at me) but some bad things happen to us. We shouldn't let them make us stop living and, if you are a believer in Jesus, let them interfere with our love for him and serving him. Notice at the end of the story in Job, he got everything back twice over. That's Gods promise for us who believe in Jesus, things may be bad here on earth sometimes, but hang on cause everything will be better one day, either here on earth, or defiantly so much better in Heaven. So if you are going though a tough time right now, remember Job and the song and that Jesus is the only place where we can find ultimate peace, not the islands.