Week 28 – Ghiordes knots and the Gossamer Bridge
Job 6-10
A short ride from the ancient city of Ephesus lies a weaving cooperative in Selçuk, Turkey. Low unassuming red brick buildings welcome you into a space where the ancient art of rug weaving is revealed from silkworm to showroom. Thick wool rugs hang displayed, durable as technicolor mountains. To the right, lit by a wall of windows, sit three wooden looms with women weaving their shuttle through taut cotton strands, fingers a blur of artistry, harpists of warp and weft crafting melodies of color in wool and silk.
The curator moves behind the harpist-weaver and asks her to pause her lightening hands and show you slowly, delicately, how she ties knots around the vertical structure to turn harp strings into artwork. Wool fibers are coarse, almost rope thick compared to silk. She ties Ghiordes knots, because, as the curator explains, these are Turkish rugs, not Persian rugs, and this knot is more durable, symmetrical. It is an ancient knot, perfected in Anatolian villages through countless generations and proven through the crucible of time to produce the most enduring rugs. A woolen rug, you are told, has between 50 and 300 knots per square inch, depending on the level of detail in the pattern.
The woman introduces herself to you, “Hi. I am Safiye.” She waves demurely, embarrassed by the attention, but delighted to demonstrate her nearly incomprehensible skill to a literal busload of Americans. The curator tells you that Safiye means pure and sincere and you believe it as your eyes watch her fingers pull and pluck the threads into knots at first slowly, an adagio in perfect form, then accelerating until her fingers are playing a prestissimo in textile so fast you hear the rhythm of the weaver as she ties a knot and trims the excess with her thread knife.
The curator bids adieu to fair Safiye and you drift to another loom, smaller in frame, perhaps five by seven feet. Here sits Fatima, older than Safiye, her presence marked with a quiet confidence, almost a boldness of spirit. The curator speaks of her with reverence, explaining that she weaves in silk. She nods and begins wordlessly, her fingers composing an opus as iridescent threads sing a symphony of visual poetry before your widening eyes. The hum of her work enchants you, mesmerizing you with the steady rhythm of her mastery as the curator notes that a silk rug, with far finer thread, can bear more than 1200 knots per square inch. Fatima will work for almost a full year on this single masterpiece, tying over six million knots, a virtuoso of her craft, her fingers performing a delicate opalescent miracle that resonates in the soul of every eye that gazes upon it, long after her loom falls silent.
The amazing thing about this process is that you are watching the weaver from the backside of the rug. The beauty is on the other side. Here, you see the skill, there you see the glory. When they take you from the work room to the show room, they show you the glory side of the rug as you sip apple tea and ponder taking out a second mortgage to buy one of these marvels. They show you the backside, the work, the hidden side, so that you can appreciate all the work that goes into the art.
Job was blinded in his grief, unable to see the Weaver on His loom. We get to read about God’s discussion with Satan, we get to see the curated view, behind the curtain. Job is stuck not in the audience of this tragedy but on the stage, cut off from everything, eyes blinded with the stage light of suffering, focused on him as he sits upon the ash heap of his sorrow with his friends. And we are watching to see how it will all unfold.
Eliphaz is the first to make the error of speaking to a broken man. They did great for seven days, but he says, “who can refrain from speaking?” and we have all felt that way in the presence of suffering. We can only be silent so long. Questions simmer and then boil and then knock the lid off the kettle and scream out loud.
Eliphaz has a thesis: The innocent, the righteous, the upright don’t suffer. We reap what we sow. Job is reaping suffering because he has sown trouble. And he challenges Job to seek God and place his case before He “who does great and unsearchable things, wonders without number.” That is how he is processing what he is seeing. And, like most of us, he is partly right. We do reap what we sow. If we sow sin, we reap a harvest of trouble and we store up granaries of sorrow. We’ve all seen it. Many of us have experienced it. And it’s also a great idea to bring our sorrows and questions before God. But Eliphaz doesn’t have the whole story. And he makes an erroneous conclusion based on incomplete knowledge. It’s a very human thing to do.
Job, poor, dear, broken Job. Can you imagine the unbearable gravity of his grief? He says that God’s arrows, poisoned arrows, are buried deep within him, his very spirit drinking their poison. His soul is a city besieged by a battalion of God’s terrible warriors. He begs God to just crush him and end it. He longs for his friends to encourage him, “for the despairing man there should be kindness from his friends so that he does not forsake the fear of the Almighty.” Job has not denied God – yet – but he can hear the rumblings and he’s terrified that in his weakness he will betray what he knows to be true. He says his friends are like deceitful wadis, dry ravines that only fill with water when it rains, but are empty once the rain stops. Useless when you really need them. Job has a teachable heart but sees the stupidity of correcting the lament of the grieving. Do you intend to correct my words spoken in grief? They are just words in the hurricane of grief. Let me be.
Job’s days “are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle and come to and end without hope.” No beautiful rug. No artistry. Only pain ending in pain. Job has nothing to lose, “therefore I will not restrain my mouth, I will speak in the anguish of my spirit, I will complain in the bitterness of my soul.” This is the grief process. It’s ok to say all the words. Just dump them all on God. Blame Him. He can take it. “What have I done to You? Why have you targeted me? Why do you not pardon my sin? WHY?” And Job lays down, probably literally lays down, in the dust and ashes, exhausted after emptying the boiling kettle of his broken heart.
Bildad is next. And remember that these guys are his friends. I think they love Job. Have you ever sat with someone for 7 days in silence, holding space in their grief? Me neither. But Bildad is trying to make sense of the senseless. He can only see the front side of the unfinished rug of Job’s life. He knows God is Just. And if God is just and Job is suffering then Job must have sinned. This is Bildad’s Thesis: “God in His justice has taken out your children because they sinned. You are suffering because you sinned. If you were pure and upright, God would restore you.” He’s not wrong. But like Eliphaz, he only has part of the story. But he continues, “God will not reject a man of integrity…he will fill your mouth with laughter.” In other words, if you do everything right, God will bless you. The problem: Job did everything right. Again, he’s not wrong. God blesses obedience. He really does. But we can’t take truth meant to encourage people to trust and obey and then attack the suffering with it. Don’t take the shovel meant to help dig a well for your friend and then bonk him in the face. God meant you to use that to help. In the same way, don’t take your limited knowledge of God and human suffering and turn it into legalism. Don’t assume you know everything. Don’t assume you have the whole story. Legalism is a gossamer bridge. It may look pretty in the starlight but it will collapse beneath the weight of suffering. Don’t trust it. Let grieving people grieve.
Job sees the truth in Bildad’s thesis, but his circumstances challenge his faith. He knows God is mighty to save. He made Orion! He put the Pleiades in the sky! He does wonderous works without number. God steps on the helpers of Rahab, the personification of chaos and disorder. Job knows God is absolutely sovereign. He knows that God is not a man that Job can take to court. He knows that is ridiculous. But his suffering, his loss, his grief leaves him with no place else to go than to file his complaint before God. He speaks in the bitterness of his soul. He asks God questions, “Is it right and good for You to oppress, to despise me whom You made while you smile at all the evil done to me?” Job cries out, if I had sinned, then you would notice me! If I were wicked, woe to me. I deserve everything. But if I challenge you, God, You will show Your power against me. Why? Why was I even born if only to suffer this pain? God, let me go. Let me pass into the land of darkness and deepest shadow.
These are the questions of a broken man. A man processing immeasurable loss. They are the questions of a man who cannot see the Weaver’s hand, who can only see the thousand knots of grief in his tear blurred field of vision. And so we must sit a while longer with Job. We sit and listen and learn how to grieve. How to lament. Because you will grieve. And you will be a sufferer’s friend. This is the master class. Don’t give up yet. We still have much to learn.
