reflections on job: part 2 {the unseen intruder}

When I read Job this time around, I did something I don't usually do when I read my Bible: I read the commentary first. I have nothing against commentators and generally trust that they are well-trained in their field of study, knowing a good deal more than me about the historical context, the intended audience, and literary devices employed in a particular text. It's just that I don't want to be told how to think of the book I'm about to read. I don't want to approach the text with a particular bias before I've even encountered it. After all, it is the Scripture that is God-breathed, not the commentary preceding it.

But like I said, I read the commentary before approaching the story of Job this time around. I'm glad I did, because the commentator reminded me of something -- and it's something that I can read and notice and comprehend on my own, but something that's easy to forget when pain is pressing in hard against your soul, shrouding it in darkness and doubt. He reminded me that it's not just God and Job at play in this story. There is an enemy, the great anti-hero: Satan himself.

In the earliest chapters, he is ushered into the throne room of heaven with the angels and has a tête-à-tête with God. God asks Satan where he's been (as if He doesn't know).

Roaming through the earth and going back and forth in it, Satan replies (1:7).

Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil, God says (1:8).

Now hold the phone: Satan is in heaven having an audience with God. Satan tells God that he's been roaming the earth looking for someone to mess with and God in turn offers up Job. Hey Lucifer. Have you thought about Job? He's a great guy. He and I are pretty tight.

Wanna bet? Satan retorts. You've given him the sweet life: he's got it so easy. I bet you that if you took away all the good things you've given him, he'd spit in your face in a minute.

Alrighty, God says. Go for it. Everything I've given him is in your hands, but just don't touch him. Deal?

Satan agrees and in a matter of a few sentences, everything Job once possessed is gone: his livestock, his servants, and his children. All his wealth and his family are gone in a breath. Job still gives glory to God despite his grief. Satan comes back to God with a new challenge in chapter two, having new ideas of how he can get Job to slap God in the face. God offers up Job a second time:

Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one on earth like him; he is blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. And he still maintains his integrity, though you incited me against him to ruin him without any reason (2:3). Satan couldn't have liked hearing that.

And so God gives the enemy permission to strike Job's body. Satan thinks he has God here; he will surely curse you to your face. And so Job is afflicted with terrible sores from his scalp to the soles of his feet. He is left mourning in the ashes, scraping his skin with shards of broken pottery.

There are a few things that stick out to me about this exchange.

Aside from the initial surprise that Lucifer is making a return appearance in heaven, I'm struck by the fact that God is not the least bit threatened by Satan's presence or by the challenge he presents. Of course He's not; He is God, after all. But seriously, He's not worried about how Job will respond; He already knows what will happen. He is, after all, the one who suggests that Lucifer take on Job.

This brings me to my second point. God declares Job to be a righteous man: in the text God affirms that Job is blameless and upright. We all know that while no one in the history of the world but Christ has lived a truly blameless life, God still counts Job as a righteous man. Before there is even a chance for the shock of God's first assertion to wear off, He declares it a second time: He really means it when He proclaims that Job is a righteous man, and He knows that Job won't turn his back on Him.

I'm also struck by the fact that the enemy is on a leash. God holds the other end of it and determines its length. God determines the parameters within which Satan might wreak havoc on Job's life, and Satan cannot go beyond those lines. I know we would all prefer that he were chained tightly to a wall in hell, that he were given no permission to roam at all, but it is something, isn't it? Satan only moves and strikes within the allowance God Himself permits.

Examining the same thought from a different angle, I notice also that Job's suffering does not occur apart from God's permission. God does not instigate, nor does He cause it, but He does allow it to occur. The myriad of questions this thought alone raises aside, this truth makes me wildly uncomfortable, especially when I consider that Satan might be making a similar wager with God concerning me. And God answers him, have you considered my servant Kirsten?

What I can also see is that the enemy's tactics have not changed. This is where the commentary shed some light for me, reminding me that since he was cast out of heaven, he's been trying to drive a wedge between God and man; he's trying to disrupt and sever relationship. He causes all sorts of trouble and hopes we'll blame God, that we'll curse Him. Our enemy hopes that we'll forget him; that we'll blame God for our suffering. That we'll question Him and doubt Him. Lose faith in Him altogether. Think of Him as cruel, sadistic, or worse, apathetic. Shake our fists at Him and curse Him. Since first going after Adam and Eve in the garden, the enemy has applied to same tactic throughout the history of the church: divide and conquer.

Any one of these observations gives rise to a hundred questions, all of which I am sure have been asked since there have been people around to ask them. Job is the oldest book of the Bible and people much smarter than myself have studied and written about it over the thousands of years it's existed as a text; I don't expect to add anything new or profound to the discussion, but I do expect it will give me a new lens through which to view my current experience.

And for now it is good for me to remember these things: that there is an enemy who is against me and seeks to divide me from my God. As for my God, He is for me and declares me as righteous before enemy and angels alike.

{stay tuned for part 3}

reflections on job: part 1 {the measure of suffering}

About a week ago, I read the book of Job in one sitting: the entire book, from start to finish. I've never read it that way prior to that day and now I'm convinced that it's a narrative that needs and begs to be read as such. Perhaps it's because I had eyes to see it and because I had the time to absorb it all in one sitting, but now I see things there that I've missed before.

I am always reluctant to draw any comparisons between myself and Job. It's a tough act to follow, isn't it? The man loses all his material wealth, property, his family, and his servants in a matter of sentences and barely a breath later, is afflicted from boils and sores from head to toe. His life is utterly devastated within the first two of forty-two chapters. And yet he famously praises God in the midst of his profound losses (The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away; may the name of the LORD be praised, 1:20). When his wife tells him to curse God and die, Job holds fast and replies, Shall we accept good from God, and not trouble? (2:10). All this while scraping sores from his body with a piece of broken pottery.

Lord, have mercy.

Anything I relegate to the category of "suffering" in my life hardly measures up to what this man experienced in such a short amount of time. But maybe that's where I need to stop myself: the minute I start quantifying suffering and deem my experience smaller or less significant, I cut off a pathway by which the wisdom offered in those forty-two chapters might gain admittance to my heart. I risk missing the point entirely. I may put a roadblock on the path by which I might gain to insight or find a specific and fitting grace for my soul.

Suffering cannot be quantified or compared; I cannot measure with any objectivity the loss and grief I experience against that of another -- even Job. When I try to measure suffering, I make it less than it is. And we all know that when you're in the thick of it, weighted down by worries and grief and darkness and loss and impossible questions, there is no bottom to the grief. You can never find the end of it.

Perhaps it's a tool of the enemy to have us thinking that our suffering is worthless, or that we are simply too weak and that is why it's so hard for us. We're really not all that righteous, are we? Aren't we just getting what we deserve? If God really loved us, He would have stopped any of this from happening.

And so on, and so on.

Truth is, regardless of how much I'm going through or how bad it is, I'm asking some of the same questions Job did. Offering some of the same defenses. Wondering what God is up to when it seems like the losses are compounding and will never end. Hurting like crazy and finding no salve in sight. Wondering if this is my life forever, if this is what the faithful can expect from a loving God. Sitting in the ashes, picking at my wounds with broken things.

So I ignored the enemy's voice, and I opened the book of Job.

what kind of gospel

... is this??

two illustrations in observing limits {crash & burn}

The milieu.
The weekend before last was gorgeous here, a return of the quintessential perfect Northwest Washington summers I remember growing up: cloudless, mid-80s, a light breeze. And miracle of miracles, not only did this weather fall on the weekend (on a consecutive Friday, Saturday, Sunday, I tell you), but it happened before the fourth of July, which is almost unheard of (because, as all Pacific NW natives know, summer doesn't actually start here until July 5).

Some of you may be rolling your eyes by now thinking that girl just needs to get over this, but you'd have to be a native and have lived through the great disappointment that was June, July, and August of 2007 and the eight months of winter that followed to appreciate fully the sheer and miraculous beauty of such perfect summer weather arriving at all, let alone prior to July 4, and on a weekend.

Burn.
Needless to say, I couldn't wait to be outside under an expanse of a blue sky uncluttered by clouds. I was anxious enough on Saturday morning that after my morning routine was over at the gym, I rushed home to shower, put on a tank top and some shorts and ran out the door as quickly as I could manage.

Without sunscreen. Oops (she thinks sheepishly).

When I got to Boulevard Park, I got an iced soy latte from The Woods (note to Sarah and Christin and Christianne: we are soooo going here!!), spread out my blanket on the grass mere feet from the ocean water, pulled out my book, and cozied in for my afternoon. I marveled at the fact that the park wasn't more crowded, that I had no issues finding a parking space nearby. I giggled as U2's "Beautiful Day" blared on my iPod. As a light breeze came off the ocean and cooled my skin, I wondered if I was experiencing heaven.

Two and a half hours later, I was still reluctant to leave. This was perfect. But I already knew I was in for a world of hurt given my lack of sun protection. The mirror confirmed my suspicions when I got home. The skin on my back, arms, and legs was bright red. I moved the straps of my tanktop to reveal the pale skin underneath. It was especially apparent then just how burned I was.

Crash.
The next day I was making my way south to head to a friend's engagement party and the same perfect weather accompanied me on my drive. The particular friend I was driving to see has made her home abroad, so she isn't someone I get to see often.

I was cruising at a comfortable speed down the interstate when suddenly traffic came to a screeching halt. My car was stopped just before a left-turning curve in the freeway and I couldn't see what had happened. Traffic wasn't crawling; it was fully stopped. It was a matter of minutes later that I heard sirens and saw flashing red lights in the rearview mirror. All the drivers pulled to the shoulders of the freeway, parking on the shoulders and leaving the lanes perfectly clear. I whispered prayers for the driver and any passengers.

Ambulances and fire trucks squealed by. After waiting a few minutes and no movement, we all started getting out of our cars. Shirtless teenage boys were playing frisbee. People were walking their dogs on the shoulders, and a woman behind me asked if I had any water I could give her 6-week-old puppies. A few minutes later, another woman walked down the length of the freeway inviting us all to partake in leftovers from a family camping trip. I was thankful for the cool ripe mango and plump red strawberries.

The minutes ticked by, slow and sluggish in the heat of the day. A few people had walked in a southerly direction to see what they could see. The rumors made their way north. Jackknifed trailer. Car flipped over.

No one knew how much longer it would be.

After waiting for a long hour, there was no change in circumstances. I called my friend's family home and left a message. I didn't know how much longer it would be. Unable to make it. So sorry. I hung the phone up, disappointed. I was damp with sweat even in the shade and the burn was making it feel as though my skin would crack every time I moved. But I had to appreciate that despite the fact that people were missing their planes, that they were running late, that we were all uncomfortably damp with sweat, we were all making the best of it: conversing interestedly with perfect strangers, playing frisbee, sharing ripe fruit off the back of a trailer.

I was looking to the south when I noticed people running back to their cars. A chorus of engines turned over and slowly, we all inched back on to the freeway and started moving again.

Just a quarter of a mile south of where I had stopped, I saw the wreck and felt as though all the breath had been sucked from my chest: broken glass. a trailer that looked as though a bomb had been lit from the inside: blankets, camping gear, coolers thrown out like confetti. an SUV with its tires in the air, the front of the car flattened. i thought of a dead dog with its legs stiff and straight in the air. and then the tow truck tugging on the upside-down vehicle, the sound of metal and glass grating against the pavement.

I wondered how anyone could have survived. I wondered at the timing. Had I gotten to that spot even fifteen seconds earlier ... I couldn't finish the thought.

The next day I learned that the driver was towing a trailer far larger than his SUV was able to handle. That he was driving too fast, the trailer swinging so slightly from side to side until it swung wider and jackknifed, flipping him over. I learned that he lived, coming away with only minor injuries. I saw that SUV. That he survived at all is a miracle.

I didn't make it to my friend's party that day. I was too shaken to drive much further. And I started thinking about sunburns and peeling skin and jackknifed trailers and overturned vehicles and how sometimes the line around my limits, the line that divides what I can handle from what I cannot is so fuzzy that I don't know I've stepped over that line until something happens. Sometimes I know exactly where they are, the warning there in black and white or in the memory of previous experiences.

I am too humbled by what I saw to do much moralizing on the matter. But what I take away from that weekend is this: my limits are real and definite. Fair skin is burned when exposed to the sun for too long without protection and cars flip over when transgressing the appropriate limits of weight and size and speed. It is good for me to remember that the space between the place where I start and where I end is not at all long. While I am fond of playing God from time to time, I have my reddened, peeling skin and the sound of glass and metal reverberating in my mind, two reminders that nothing good waits for me when I get cocky or forgetful or dismissive or too smart for my own good, thinking I can handle it without detriment to myself and others.

I don't know where the boundary line is most of the time, the line between Him and me. I step over into His territory often enough, thinking it is mine, that I am more in myself than I really am: that I am capable, that I am strong, that there are no consequences that come from stepping outside the limits I pretend aren't there. Sometimes I know exactly where it is, but I step over it anyway.

I don't really know what I'm trying to say anymore, except if it's to acknowledge the truth that I think it's better for me to surrender it all to Him in the first place, not to operate from within my all-too-limited self. What if I live moment to moment, giving over my energy, my work, my cooking, my writing, my photography, my relationships ... what if I give up my power to Him completely in these places? In fact, what if I give it up to Him in all the places (not just the ones I deem as in need of help)?

I know what happens if I don't. I wonder what might happen if I do.

photos by kirsten.michelle

leaning. learning. letting go.

I am feeling awake and alive these days; it is a return I've anticipated. I can taste, feel, smell, and enjoy again. I can appreciate beauty and move freely. I actually ran up the stairs today, skipping steps to retrieve my laundry. It was glorious!!

While I have no desire to go back to a place where I feel empty and drained and sluggish and heavy, I don't want to lose my grip on the truth of how truly bereft, how terribly empty I am without Christ to fill me. Things that I thought came from myself like the ability to extend basic kindnesses or to practice selflessness really don't originate anywhere within me. They start with Him.

It was never more clear than when I had nothing in myself to call upon: it starts with Him. I'm not sure how to say it in a way that doesn't sound trite or pithy. But after starting each day at the end of myself, I got a crash course on leaning into Him moment by moment.

I am already seeing the ways in which I am defaulting to old habits and ways of being. I find that when I can lean upon myself, I do. When I insist on being strong, it invariably limits the ways in which the power of God can be made perfect in my weakness. Leaning into Him more fully is a lesson I am learning and one I suspect that I will continue to learn and re-learn over the course of my life.

If anything, I'm perceiving with greater clarity how concurrently painful and beautiful it is to let go, and how ready He is to fill us when we finally do.

photo © 2008 jen fox photography

the psalms of david

Save me, O God,
for the waters have come up to my neck.
I sink in the miry depths,
where there is no foothold.
I have come into the deep waters;
the floods engulf me.
I am worn out calling for help;
my throat is parched.
My eyes fail,
looking for my God.
[69:1-3]


I’ve been spending some time in the Psalms lately. David’s songs are potent, earthy, and raw; the words heavy-laden with anger and fear and sin and confession and blood and tears on the one hand, and ecstatic, elated with praise and joy and dancing on the other.

In his darker moments, I can imagine David on his hands and knees, digging up earth with his fingernails, chest heaving with sobs that threaten to make his sternum collapse, thick threads of spittle hanging from his mouth; he grips and tears at his hair; he presses the heels of his palms into his eyes, he scratches at his face. His throat becomes raw, his lips gummy. His cries come from a depth he cannot plumb and are swallowed by the emptiness around him.

For troubles without number surround me;
my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see.
They are more than the hairs of my head,
and my heart fails within me.
[40:12]

We all know the story of the boy-turned-king, the warrior, the one God had hand-picked. We know the story of how he slew the giant with a rock and sling; we are familiar with his dalliance with Bathsheba. We’ve read of his enemies and how madly they pursued him, thirsty for blood.

Too often I’ve lost the heart of the man in the stories I’ve heard a hundred times; the flesh and blood human being is reduced to a caricature, a mere stick-figure. Familiarity turns those words ripped from his chest and dripping with his tears and blood into dead things, dry and stale, scattered on the wind like dust. But seasoned with my own tears, I find his songs new and fresh with a kind of life. David’s songs give me permission to be desolate, weary, tired, and questioning. Even the man after God’s own heart found himself wading in mire, his heart failing. He found himself overtaken and drowning, shackled to his sins and failures, weighted with grief. There were times he couldn’t see God at all.

Yet from this same heart, he was also able to say:

I will exalt you, my God the King;
I will praise your name for ever and ever.
Every day I will praise you
and extol your name for ever and ever.
Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise;
his greatness no one can fathom.
[145:1-2]

While the depths of his grief might seem to contrast sharply with his ecstatic exclamations of joy and praise, both were poured out of the same heart. David permitted himself to experience fully both bottomless despair and ecstatic, effusive rejoicing. He did not hide any of it from God or attempt to sanctify his experience, but allowed the truth of his heart gush forth whether it came out of a chest that was ready to cave in, or from one that felt weightless and winged.

And I find myself wondering if I can do the same: not simply to trust in his presence and goodness when my eyes are red and puffy, when my blood boils underneath my skin, when I’m clawing at the earth with my fingernails, but also to explode in praise, to commend His goodness when I feel as though I'm being crushed.

I do not know whether we need to experience the infinity of grief in order to know its counterpart in joy, but I do know this: David’s heart held the breadth of it and did not seek to contain it, this heart that was said to be like God’s own.

And that is truth I can grab onto.

silence

I've had this CD for years, and historically it has not received much playtime. I've taken listening to Jars of Clay's Eleventh Hour album nearly every day. Each track contains something precious, and has resonated with me deeply in different ways over the last several weeks.

The CD was already in my car this morning when I started it and was on the sixth track, "Silence". It's not one I've paid much attention to until this morning. But as I find myself stripped, deeply exhausted, feeling quiet and defeated (we can be really honest here, right??), as I find myself in tears many times in the course of a day, this song gave words where I had none. It gave me permission to ask the question: where are You?

Though I know I can trust God is in this and hasn't gone away, my heart is sore and tired and just wants Him to be done with whatever He's doing.

I'm someone who believes the meaning of a song is inextricably tied to the music, so I'm posting both a video with the song and the lyrics.

Close your eyes and listen. Maybe it will speak to something in you, too.

Take
Take till there's nothing
Nothing to turn to
Nothing when you get through
Won't you break
Scattered pieces of all I've been
Bowing to all I've been
Running to
Where are you?
Where are you?

Did you leave me unbreakable?
You leave me frozen?
I've never felt so cold
I thought you were silent
And I thought you left me
For the wreckage and the waste
On an empty beach of faith
Was it true?

Cuz I ... I got a question
I got a question
Where are you?

Scream
Deeper I wanna scream
I want you to hear me
I want you to find me
Cuz I ... I want to believe
But all I pray is wrong
And all I claim is gone

And I ... I got a question
I got a question
Where are you?
Yeah....yeah
And where ... I ... I got a question
I got a question
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?
Where are you?