“Living
in the Paradox”
Job 30:16-31
The
Grieving Community:
We stumble through life as
broken people, seeking some sense of comfort as we struggle with loss during
this season. We know we should feel joy. We know we should feel excitement. We
know we should feel love and hope as we face these holidays. Yet, many of these
feelings seem fleeting as we sit mired in the tragedies of our lives. Death
haunts us. Loss of dreams leave us sleepless. Unemployment causes fear. Other
losses leave us wondering. We weep. We cry. We yell out to God. We doubt. We
struggle. We mourn.
So, we join into a community of
lament. We look for answers and find few. We try to pray and groans emerge. We
hold tight to memories and fear making new ones. Where is the joy? Where is the
peace? Silent nights hold the wrong type of silence.
My own grief over losing my
son, Peter Emmanuel Jackson, to his lifelong battle with hypo-plastic left
heart syndrome on April 18, 2021, has taught me the prayers and songs of
lament. Peter passed at the age of 16 during a surgery to replace his
pacemaker. My wife and I have been shattered ever since. So, we have spent much
time and tears reading the laments of Scripture. We have also processed our
grief through the writing of our own laments. We ache through loss and have
found comfort through parched prayers and melancholy melodies.
The Lament of Job:
Another place I have turned as
I have tried to grasp any sense of understanding my great loss is to the book
of Job. Job, a righteous man knows the pain of immense loss, but not the
satisfaction of knowing why. Through much of his life, he experienced many
blessings – wealth, a large family, the joy of a loving wife, respect in his
community, and a meaningful relationship with God. All this vanished in a
moment as his wealth was stolen, as his ten children died while celebrating
together, as his wife told him to curse God, and as his body developed a
terrible sickness. These events, compounded by faulty wisdom from friends,
brought great struggle for this man in his relationship with God.
In Job 30:16-31, we hear a
portion of Job’s response to one of those friends, Bildad. This man, who
masqueraded as a comforter, tells Job that no one can truly relate to God
because humans are but maggots and worms. These words, for obvious reasons, did
not bring Job comfort, but instead brought Job to the mood in which we find him
in the poetry found in this portion of his lament.
Job and the Night:
Job begins his words of sorrow
addressing a personified night.[1] Darkness has consumed him
so thoroughly that he feels its presence as a living and breathing entity. It
chokes him like a garment pulled too tightly around his neck. This could relay
that feeling in our throat as grief overtakes us, that lump that steals our
breath, and only finds appeasement through screaming tears.
Job also feels that night has
reduced him to dust and ashes. In the culture in which Job lived, dust and
ashes symbolized death, grief, and abasement. At this point in his grief, in
the attack he feels from the forces of night, he declares himself as mourning
and death.[2] Many people feel ruined in
the depths of our beings. We experience death over and over and over in our
souls. We, like Job become mourning and death.
Job Dealing with the Paradox of God in
Our Suffering:
Job continues and turns his ire
toward God. In his honest experience he cries out to God and hears no answer.
God merely looks at him as he tries to understand why God has allowed tragedy
into his life. God has become the enemy, bringing death, allowing for
inexplicable, unjust circumstances. Job feels attacked by God. He feels as if
God has placed him within this storm. Job knows that God will bring him to
death.
These expressions of angst
flow from Job’s mouth. He appears to despise God. His experience of grief has
led Job to confess that God has dumped upon him, that God has poured cruelty
upon him, and that God has cursed him. Even though, he has previously, in fact
just recently in chapter 29, declared God as his friend, he still feels
betrayed. He lives in paradox, trying to understand how the sovereign God of
love could allow all these things.
We could ask similar
questions. As we consider the message of this holiday season: that the God of
love, the God who seeks relationship with each one of us, sent His beloved Son
into our world so that we might experience restoration, we face loss. We wonder
how this God who supposedly offers friendship to us through the amazing gift of
Jesus Christ, could also allow for such tragedy, such pain, and such grief in
our lives. So, like Job, we sit in the paradox, wearing our sackcloth and
ashes.
Job and the Paradox of Common Wisdom:
Job continues exploring the
paradox of his existence. In verse 25 he thinks about his actions of
righteousness when he wept for those in trouble or grieved with the poor. But
reality contradicts the expectations. Common wisdom in Job’s day claimed that
those who lived in reflection of God, choosing love and compassion, would
benefit from God’s blessings. But when Job hoped for good, evil came and when
he looked for light, darkness came. The paradox continues. In these statements,
Job wonders, “Why?” None of it seems right. None of it seems just. None of it
seems to measure up to expectations in regard to his relationship with God. Do
we not wonder similar things? Do we not wonder about the encroaching darkness
as we wander through the inexplicable pain of life? Do we not wrestle with the
injustice that has been cast upon us by a God who appears merciless and
unloving?
Job and the Paradox of Living in Grief:
Job concludes his lament with
three metaphors. In the first he states that he has become the brother of
jackals and the companion of owls. Both of these animals lived in the
wilderness. The people of Job’s culture viewed them as desert dwellers. Every
time jackals are mentioned throughout the Bible, except once, they are
associated with lamentation and mourning – they give voice to their desolate
and sterile environment. Isaiah 43:20 is the exception, where jackals give off
praise because the desolate desert has been transformed into a garden.[3] Owls also give praise when
God transforms the desolation. In this passage, Isaiah declares that God will
restore Israel from their exile in Babylon, that God will bring about a new
thing. Perhaps God will restore all those who mourn, all those who feel in
exile. Perhaps all those who mourn will also learn to praise. For now, we sit
like Job, like the jackal and the owl yelping about our desolation.
The second metaphor concerns
Job’s skin, which has been blackened. Some feel this refers to the boils that
cover him. Since it appears among two other metaphors, we should likely
consider it a metaphor as well. By speaking of his blackened skin, Job emphasizes
the gloominess that consumes his very being, darkening his continence. The
night covers him. No light can seep through into his heart.
The final metaphor just might
show that Job is a musician. He states, “My heart is tuned to mourning and my
flute to the sound of wailing.” Through these words, Job emphasizes that those
instruments usually reserved for praise and joy now only declare his grief,
pain, and weeping. Job feels that his very existence is a reversal of what
should be.[4] Instead of praising the
God of love, he laments, mourns, and curses.
Resting in the Presence and Promise of
God:
Shortly after this complaint,
this agonizing honesty, God comes to Job and speaks out of the storm. As God
speaks, God illustrates to Job through images of creation and God’s control of
the elements of chaos that God remains present with Job in the midst of the
sorrow and in the midst of the suffering.
God
sits with us in our dust and ashes. God grieves with us. God allows us to
wrestle and doubt and yell. God invites us to rediscover His mercy, love, and
sovereignty in the midst of our grieving. God does bring peace. God promises
that He will restore joy into our lives. Yes, we wait. Yes, we weep. Yes, we
exist, like Job, in the paradox of the unfulfilled promise. Yes, we sing our
laments intermingled with praise. We hope in the promises of God. We look
toward the promise, toward the truth of the Christ Child – the God who enters
into our lives, into our mourning, into our nights, into our darkness, and
offers us light. And we wait for all things to become new!
