reflections on job: part 4 {the mystery of God in the shadows}

I'll admit it: once upon a time, I thought Job just needed to suck it up. You know, why couldn't he basically pull himself up by his bootstraps and take it like a man? Yeah Job, I know it stinks, but it's temporary and you know this. Just trust God. I mean, how hard is that?

Add a few years, a dash of experience, a lot of tears and bake it all in the ovens of humility (fired by a few less-than-pleasant experiences of my own) and I think better of him now. Measuring sticks of suffering aside, he experienced several profound personal losses, one succeeding the other with scarcely a breath in between. After bearing the losses of his wealth, children, and property, after being afflicted with sores from his scalp to his heels, after bearing with the words of a wife who wants to see his suffering end even at the cost of rejecting God, he still offers praise. I don't know if I could do that. I think I could be pious about it all for maybe a minute, but when the reality of the loss and the pain set in, I am not sure that praise is what would rise to the surface of my soul.

In reading the text, we have the distinct advantage of having more of a bird's eye view than he did. We see God and Lucifer in conversation, the accuser bartering with God for how he might tempt Job to defy God altogether. We see and know the enemy. And we see that God really isn't at all worried about how it will turn out.

I'm no expert, but I'm guessing Job was knowledgeable about the stories of the creation and the fall of man. I'm fairly certain he knew about Adam and Eve, the deception and temptation, and how man was cut off from God with just one little bite of fruit. He must have known there was an enemy. But still, if Job's friends are any indicator, popular theology of the time sought to explain the dilemma of human suffering by stating that if you're good, God blesses you and if you sin, God punishes you. Therefore (conclude his friends), Job must have done something offensive of which he needs to repent. Nowhere in their explanation is the enemy mentioned.

It's amazing how quickly I forget what is true when my feet are to the fire. And maybe Job also lost sight of the fact that God is good and just and has our best in mind; that He is our defender and rescuer and redeemer and His eye is always upon us; that nothing that happens to us happens apart from His permission and that we are more protected and safe than we realize. And it also seems he lost sight of the fact that there's an enemy who takes the best possible advantage of the fact that we so easily forget about him.

The enemy operates in darkness and deception and trickery. He is good at averting our gazes from where they should be. He wants us to forget that there is something more true than anything else. The enemy wants us to call God into question and to place Him on the witness stand. He wants us to think God caused our pain and maybe even enjoys watching us suffer. He wants us to think that if God really loved us, He wouldn't let this happen. And if God really doesn't love us, then we may as well give up and go home. He wants us to direct our anger at God, to accuse Him of causing, allowing, and perpetuating our pain. He wants us to wonder if our lives of faith and devotion are an elaborate sham. He wants us to abandon our faith not in a quiet, unassuming way, but in a fist-shaking, screaming-match, throat-scraping, very public, broadcast-on-the-5-o'clock-news, there's-no-doubt-about-it way.

The enemy's design is to hem us in, to shorten the range of our vision until we cannot see beyond the boundaries of our own pain. In drawing our attention away from God, he takes us captive and makes us his hostages. It's like Stockholm syndrome in a way: we align ourselves with our captor, agreeing with the deceptions and doubts he drives into our hearts. Unable to retaliate in any other way, desiring to protect ourselves, we turn those doubts and deceptions into weapons and direct them at God. He's supposed to be our protector and rescuer, right? If He's so good and our pain is so bad, why does He not come and save us? And when God does not answer, our agreements with the enemy begin to take root even more deeply. It is a dark and lonely place to be and the questions and doubts continue to cut off our souls from the light of day.

I am certain that not even God would dare minimize or make light of anyone's pain. And while this may sound ridiculous at first, I believe that the only thing to do is the one thing the enemy doesn't want us to do and fix our gaze on the face of God, to know and affirm:

The LORD is righteous in all his ways
and loving toward all he has made.
The LORD is near to all who call on him,
to all who call on him in truth.

Psalm 145:17-18


Without knowing why and without being trite or overly pious about it, without intending to be the least bit dismissive, I believe the greatest act of defiance against our enemy is to worship our God.

Even so, a number of weighty questions remain.

God is unbearably quiet in most of the text of Job. And as I sit in my own pile of ashes in a way, I'm wondering about what I can learn from Job by turning his story over and over in my heart. I wonder what He is doing in the shadows as He listens to Job's friends all but accuse him of some vile sin time and again. I wonder what was in His heart as He watched Job scrape at his sores with bits of broken pottery. I wonder what He was thinking as Job and asked why?, over and over again. I wonder how He held himself in silence when Job requested an audience with God so Job could make his case. I wonder how His heart felt as He counted and collected Job's tears.

But He is there. He is present, hidden by the shadows. And He is not done with Job ... not yet. Not even close.

reflections on job: part 3 {asking questions & making a case}

Why is life given to a man

whose way is hidden,

whom God has hedged in?

For sighing comes to me instead of food;

my groans pour out like water.

What I feared has come upon me;

what I dreaded has happened to me.

I have no peace, no quietness;

I have no rest, but only turmoil.

Job 3:23-26

This is at the end of Job's first speech since the onslaught of his pain and loss. His friends have come to be with him and seeing how much he is suffering, sit with him on the ground in silence for seven days (2:13). Just sitting. Just being present with him. Seven whole days and nights (and we all know that when you're in the thick of it, the nights are the hardest).

These first words out of his mouth are heavy with sadness: he laments the day he was born, wondering why he did not perish at birth (3:11), or why he is given life when his days are so bitter (3:20-21). There is no rest, nor is there any escape for him in his waking or living hours; death seems to be the only way out.

His friends, being the good Jewish boys they are, seek to explain to Job his pain. A very simplistic way of summarizing their theology is that if you're good and obedient, God blesses you. If you offend God, he curses you. They tell Job that God is disciplining him and that he should evaluate himself closely and confess his sin to God, do his best to make amends and live a righteous life. Job maintains before his friends that he has not offended God, that he has not exacted any injustice. In fact, Job desires to "speak to the Almighty / and to argue my case with God" (13:3).

From chapters 3 through 31, Job and his friends go round and round with arguments and answers to arguments. Job maintains his integrity and his friends try to convince him that his suffering is God's chastisement for him. When Elihu shows up in chapter 32, he tries to put both Job and his friends in their places: his friends are unable to answer Job's arguments or prove him wrong. To Job, he says that God does no wrong or evil toward any man (34:10), but "those who suffer he delivers in their suffering; / he speaks to them in their affliction" (36:15).

If I were Job, I'd be asking: How? How is he delivering me in this suffering? From what is He delivering me? How is He speaking? God has not said a thing.

I'm struck by the fact that in this span of more than thirty chapters (and who knows how many days and nights), God is alarmingly silent. While the pain continues and while his friends argue and while Job wonders and asks and maintains his integrity, God is quiet. The suffering continues, and Job wants to make his case before God, who does not answer him. At least not yet.

This song is one that has stayed with me since I first heard it about ten years ago. There is some comfort in knowing that Christ did not spare himself from any aspect of our human lives, including suffering; in His last moments He knew what it was to feel like God had disappeared, extricated Himself from the scene completely. But even in light of this, the questions continue and we wonder why, and when it will stop. Job asked, and I think no matter what kind of suffering we face, his questions are representative of those we ask when we are hedged in, when the pain just won't stop.

Please, God. Please. Answer me.

This song has no answers. But I love that in it, the questions I'm sometimes too afraid to ask are said out loud. There's a certain not-aloneness in that, and an inherent permission to feel the same.

NOTE: For some reason, the music doesn't want to embed in the post. I've put the song over on the sidebar.


Rich Mullins
"Hard to Get"

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