Week 32 – Whispers of Hope in the Fringes of His Ways
Job 26-30
This has been a strange week in our little community. We had a baby dedication on Sunday. It’s a beautiful time where parents stand up with their precious little bundles of life and we as the ekklesia, the gathering of believers, parents and everyone, vow to help bring these tiny squishy humans into the faith. To love them, to fight for their parent’s marriage, and to live out the gospel so that when these children can sit still long enough to listen, it all makes sense because they have seen it lived out right in front of them. It is one of those moments where everything feels right. Where the quickening pulse of wiggling, giggling toddlers and the warm cooing of sleeping infants rise like an offering of sound, an auditory incense, breathing life into our people and drawing bright happy tears of worship from the family of God.
And then, without warning, grief hit at the extremes – one of our people lost her mother after a stroke. The whole family gathered around her, grieving, singing Amazing Grace as the Lord carried her home to glory. A beautiful life, a long life, a legacy of godliness and goodness. Sad in all the best ways. Then, tragically, at the tender dawn of life, a precious couple suffered a miscarriage. Their joy extinguished, their hopes shattered in the sterile office of the obstetrician. One life, long (but never long enough), breathing her last surrounded by family. The other, fewer weeks than I can count on trembling fingers, ended before a first breath is ever drawn surrounded only by the loving embrace of her mother’s womb. One life joyously long. One life achingly short. Both lives ending in glory. And if you want to argue with me about the child being in glory, you can ask Jesus when we see Him face to face. I will not debate. You can take that up with The Lord of Hosts.
Job, as it has been over the past several weeks, is the canvas of my meditation. It is such a brutally long book. I have often joked that we should read the first three chapters, then skip to thirty-eight just to spare ourselves the burden. But as I have read through it this time I have been forced to sit longsuffering in the interminable vesper light of suffering, yearning, almost pleading for darkness to finally overtake me so that I can rest my eyes from the calamity of a broken man.
But Job gives no respite. The entire five chapters is Job giving his closing argument before God, before his useless friends, before Elihu breaks his silence. Job begins his rebuttal to Bildad with his now familiar tone – sharp edged sarcasm, precise and cutting:
“What a help you are to the weak!
What counsel you have given to one without wisdom!
What great insight you have displayed!”
Acrid words from a caustic soul. Here we have a man who wants to die but is forced to outlive his explanations. He has nothing left, and out of that emptiness comes one of the most extraordinary descriptions of the greatness of God in the whole of Scripture.
“The departed spirits tremble”, he begins, “those beneath the waters”. Ancient near eastern cosmology viewed the world as sky, then land, then waters of chaos, then the underworld. And you can see why. When you go to the deep places, the edge of the world, the coastlines and the valleys, what do you see? Water. The deepest place on earth has a sea at the bottom – the Dead Sea, 1,400 feet below sea level. The word for “departed spirits” is Rephaim, the departed souls of ancient kings, revered and worshipped by the ancients. And what are they doing? Trembling. Next, Sheol, the nether world, is naked before God and Abaddon, the place of destruction, is laid bare before the God of Glory. The powerful kings of old and the places which hold the mysteries and terror of unconquerable inevitable death lay naked, exposed and trembling before God. A few verses later we encounter Rahab, the mythical monster who inhabits the seas, the ancient manifestation of chaos. When he encounters God he is shattered, not by force, nor by sword, but by God’s wisdom. God’s wisdom tames chaos. Breaks it, and brings it under His dominion and power.
Job crescendos to verse 14 where he proclaims:
“Behold, these are the fringes of His ways, how faint is His whisper!
But who can understand the mighty thunder of His power?”
Chaos and death, the insatiable, tireless enemies of humanity, agents of suffering, tyrants of despair, confront the mere fringes of His ways and are categorically undone. They unravel at the edges; their very molecular bonds ripped like a seam. God does not need a frontal assault to destroy what we fear most. The faintest whisper, the brush of a stray thread, the passing corner of the hem of the robe of the King of Kings, and death itself collapses into vapor. What then of His thunder? If His whisper unravels the chaos of death, who can endure the Voice of God let loose in full? Who can even survive, much less comprehend the terrible glorious roar of His power?
It is this God, this great terrible world shattering God, who has, in Job’s mind, taken away his right to justice and embittered his soul.
Job then describes the hopelessness of the godless – they build wealth for nothing, their houses are frail gossamer, huts of twigs and detritus, and these men are carried away, as Job’s children were, by the scouring, scorching east wind. He will not be spared. He will try to flee, and men will mock him as he is consumed.
Job transitions to the riches men have mined from the earth. Iron and copper, drawn from the depths, beautiful sapphires and gold we humans pull from the darkness and hew from the rock. The sparking stuff we wage war over, the shiny treasures we end life to possess, these things we humans can discover, but wisdom – wisdom! – where can it be found?
Man sees gold and knows its worth, but when he realizes he lacks wisdom and goes searching, when he mines the depths for it, the depths themselves tell him, “It’s not here!” Gold and rubies and topaz are foreign currency in the marketplace of wisdom. Where then can we find wisdom? Where can we get understanding in this crazy life? How can we make it all make sense? What if we die? Can we find wisdom in death? Even Abaddon, the place of utter destruction and Death, they have heard of wisdom. Heard the rumors, heard the whisper rumbles echo in the corridors of Sheol. But death does not speak the language of heaven and knows only that wisdom isn’t here.
God understands its way and He knows it’s place…and to man He said,
“Behold, the fear of the Lord, that is wisdom, and to depart from evil, that is understanding.”
Job, in the lonely silence of suffering has come to understand what humanity in all of their brilliance could never discover: Wisdom is the fruit of awestruck wonder when we encounter God. Understanding is born when we depart from evil and follow goodness. We think we can buy it. Earn it. Work it out of the ground. Research our way to it. Think ourselves into wisdom. But we can’t. God is the source of all wisdom. He is the source of all understanding, and suffering, the groans and wails of the brokenhearted, can turn us to the God who can teach us who He is. But without suffering, we can never become broken enough to understand.
Job then moves into a lament of his life before grief,
“in the days when God watched over me, when His lamp shone over me and I walked by His light through the darkness. When the friendship of God was over my home. When the Almighty was with me and my children were around me”
To feel the closeness of God, to experience His friendship, to walk through the darkness by the light of His goodness, to be surrounded by your children, literal objects of God’s blessings that you can hug and kiss, whose hair you can brush and whose laughter you can hear, and then to feel so alone. So forgotten. So lonely. To be alone in the dark is one thing. But to have been living in the light, to have tasted God’s goodness, to have known His friendship and intimacy and then, then to feel the raw aching loss of it is an endless abyss of incomprehensible sadness.
Job thought, “I will die in my own home” because he had reasonable expectations that life would kind of go on like it always had. Isn’t that what we always do? But then the stroke. Then the miscarriage. Then the knock on the door, the late night call, and life changes instantly. He was a pillar in his community, people sought his wisdom, he fed orphans, helped the needy, defended the vulnerable. He was eyes to the blind and made widows sing for joy. Life for Job was beautiful. “But now…” he begins chapter 30, “But now…” his expectations lay shattered and his very soul is poured out. Pain seizes him at night, gnaws at his bones, and in the deepest of sadnesses, Job feels like God has grabbed him by the collar and slammed him into the mud and left him naked and broken.
“I cry out to You for help, but You do not answer. I stand up and You turn away from me. You have become cruel to me…You dissolved me in the storm.”
The searing pain of loss is unbearable.
“I expected good, then evil came; when I waited for light, then darkness came. I am seething within and cannot relax”
Grief has burned both ends of his candle and he is out of wax. Job, blameless and upright, the mighty pillar of goodness and godliness, who upheld his entire community with his integrity and wisdom, who blessed with his prosperity, and comforted the broken, is now a smoldering wick, extinguished by the unyielding sadness of suffering.
Sometimes suffering feels that way. Endless. Hopeless. We are burned up and burned out, bitter and broken. Grief has transformed us from vessels of gladness into piles of broken pottery, incapable of ever holding joy again. Job can’t know it yet, can’t see it yet, but hope is there. Wisdom is in the ashes. The God Job thinks hates him is actually teaching him as he hurts.
Maybe you are hurting today. Maybe you are a smoldering wick, unable to bear up enough to flop out of bed and put on pants. Hope is there. I promise. Hope that doesn’t disappoint. Hold on. Keep grieving. Let your soul be still. God is working. He is about to show up.
Bear patiently the cross of grief or pain;
Leave to your God to order and provide;
In ev’ry change he faithful will remain.
Be still, my soul! your best, your heav’nly friend
Thru’ thorny ways leads to a joyful end.
