Lots of jobs suck. Even jobs that you might think wouldn't be too bad, like a doctor or something, have tremendous drawbacks. That's because it's work. It's something you do all the time, and something you HAVE to do, and nothing is fun all the time. And everyone has bad days. If there was a good-paying job that was easy, everyone would do it. And our entire economy would collapse.

People think that today, they got it bad. Like a fry cook at McDonald's. OK, that job sucks. Long hours, low pay, horrible conditions. But what about kids working in sweatshops in Indonesia? That job sucks, but at least they get paid, something. Through history, there have been much worse jobs. What about a medieval barber who bled people with leeches? What about a blind leper beggar? What about a galleon slave? Or any slave, for that matter?

To me, though, one of the hardest jobs in history would have to be Old Testament Prophet. There was no pay. I mean, sure, the Lord provides all your needs and everything, but there was never any guarantee that that just didn't mean sackcloth and ashes, or wandering in the desert, or locusts and wild honey.

(NOTE: People think locusts and wild honey sounds really disgusting, but this is just one of those Bible things that folks just don't get. Because back in those old-timey days they really did eat locusts. I'm not kidding. Anyway, locusts wasn't the bad part. The bad part was having to find and gather wild honey in the desert).

Whatever you did as an Old Testament Prophet, though, you weren't going to be popular. You might think of someone like Moses being pretty well-liked, you know, leading his people out of slavery in Egypt and all, especially the way he stuck it to the Pharaoh with all those plagues and all. Power to the People! And he may well have been real popular up to that point, but after that they were kind of cranky. They'd been thinking how great it would be to be out of Egypt, but not how hard it would be to be wandering the desert for 40 years. They complained all the time, about everything. There was no food, so they complained about that. Then God gave them manna from Heaven, and then they complained about that. Yeah, Moses didn't have an easy job: Hard enough, I reckon, spending 40 years in the desert with a bajillion people who were happy, let alone ones who were so pissed off all the time.

Like most Old Testament Prophets, Moses didn't even want the job. He was pretty content up to that point just tending his father-in-law's flocks. Jeremiah was the same way, only he was a bit more creative in his excuses. "I can't do it! I'm no good at speaking, I don't like to travel, I'm too young, I don't even like locusts."

People nowadays think Prophets were like Psychics, always talking about the future, but that's not exactly what they did. Some of them, like Daniel and Isaiah, did, but that's just a small part of what they did. Prophets mostly just did whatever God told them to do, or said what He told them to, or went where He told them to. In a way they were like Sales Reps.

And most of them had a tough sell. Face it, what they were selling wasn't very popular. It wasn't peace and love and joy; it was judgement and repentance. And folks who need that stuff sure don't want to buy it. If I was a Prophet, and God told me go somewhere, I might go, but the first think I would be thinking was that I would be playing to a tough crowd once I got there.

A big part of their job was just saying "Thus sayeth the Lord". It was like their business card. You might think, big deal, anyone can SAY that. Or you might think, they were PROPHETS, of course that's what they SAID. But back then it wasn't like it is today, and they took that stuff very seriously. If you said "Thus sayeth the Lord" and your prediction didn't 100% come true, or what you said contradicted the law or the books they already had, they put you to death as a heretic. They didn't play. I mean, being put death wasn't THAT bad, seeing as how they eventually put to death most all the real prophets anyway. On the one hand, I reckon the fake ones could tell themselves "Hey! They're putting me to death! Just like a REAL Prophet!" On the other hand, I reckon there's gotta be a difference between being put to death for something you really believe in and something you just made up.

Some of them had it easier than others. Nathan had the ear of the King even, which wasn't so bad. I wonder though how easy his job was, like did the King ever just try to dodge him.

"King David, you have a call on Line 2 from Nathan the Prophet."

"What does he want?"

"It's about Bathsheba. He wants a meeting with you and Uriah."

"Tell him I'm busy."

Folks don't ever want to be told that something they're doing is wrong or bad for them. It was no different back then than it is today. I know I sure don't want to hear people talking about judgement and repentance all the time, and the last thing I want to do is to have to start preaching it on street corners. Public speaking is hard enough anyway when folks WANT to hear what you have to say.

The worst part of the job would of course be the retirement plan. Which is to say there was none, because like I said earlier, they were almost always put to death. Or even just murdered.

I don't want to make it sound all bad. It's got to be something, for God to be that real to you, and to feel like you're not wasting your life because you know you're doing what He wants you to do. Anyway, if not that, then no one would ever have done it. And the Old Testament would be like 5 pages long.