Once there was a man who was good. Blameless and upright, one who shunned evil. He was good the way a stone is still — from birth, without ever having chosen it.

Then the dark forces came. They took from him first what was outside: his possessions and the people he loved. Then they reached inward, toward his body and his sleep. They wanted to know whether goodness would hold when the ground was pulled from under it.

His wife told him to curse God and die. He answered: we accept the good, we accept the evil too. And he stayed.

In the darkness he saw his own shadows for the first time. He could have cursed and struck back. The door stood open. He felt it in himself. In that feeling he grasped what goodness means. Before, he was good. Now he chose it. Thus it became his own.

The dark forces believed they were taking his goodness from him. They were showing it to him.

At the end, God spoke from the storm. No explanation was given, only the magnitude of what is. There the man understood what he had merely heard all his life. By hearsay he had known God; now his eye saw him. That was the turning point. The seeing.

Only after that came the double. Seven sons again. And three daughters, the most beautiful in all the land: Jemimah, Keziah, and Keren-Happuch. Their names have survived, those of the sons have faded. And the father gave them inheritance, equal to their brothers, among them — as hardly any man in his time did. Whoever has walked through the shadows knows that dignity, when shared, grows. That was the maturity. He could receive the double because he now saw through himself.

So he stood at the end with two things: humble before the mystery, proud of the good he had held when everything fell from his hands. His pride was dignity. His goodness was real. The love that endures all things and never ceases had carried him.

Bible references

By René Jochum and Claude (Anthropic). License: CC-BY-4.0.