Job 19

On a recent drive to a city south of us, I was reminded, Winter is not forever; Spring does come back around each year. On the drive down, we commented on the green haze around the trees, the bright blue sky with the fluffiest clouds, and the warmth from the sun through the car windows. The Susquehanna River was beautiful with her banks covered in bright green grass.

And then the snow came. Just three or four inches. Just enough to make me doubt the arrival of Spring. Just enough to convince me we are stuck in an eternal time loop. On our drive home, the various houses with Christmas lights still up and shining only served to convince me further – We are truly stuck in a wintry time loop! Christmas is days away, and I have to do the baking and shopping.

They call this an “onion snow.” Which I guess means we will have a fabulous crop of onions come fall. But all I have are onion tears over the daffodils and hyacinth frozen in the flower beds.

There are things we know, things we do not doubt for a minute. We know that Winter has an end (dubious though it may currently seem). We know that Spring will come. She fell asleep for one dang minute and Winter played a mean prank. But! Spring is certain. We know it! We plant seeds indoors in anticipation of a future garden. We watch for Robins and listen for the frogs in the evenings.

There were things that Job thought he knew. He thought he knew why God would allow so much suffering in his life. He thought God had purposed the suffering against him, aiming His bow, sending the arrows to their mark. He thought there would be no justice for him, no one to speak on his behalf. He thought God had turned against him and made him an enemy. He knew his friends and family were turning away from him, pulling back from him, avoiding him. He knew God was pursuing him. He knew God would judge him at the last. These were the things he thought he knew.

“…know then that God has put me in the wrong and closed his net about me. Behold, I cry out, ‘Violence!’ but I am not answered; I call for help, but there is no justice. He has walled up my way, so that I cannot pass, and he has set darkness upon my paths. He has stripped from me my glory, and taken the crown from my head. He breaks me down on every side, and I am gone, and my hope he has pulled up like a tree. He has kindled his wrath against me and counts me as his adversary.”

Job 19:6-11

Job feels the isolation that suffering brings. That feeling of being put in “time-out” while everyone else gets to live life as usual. That anxiety of being around people who you know love you – you know they do – but who also are incapable of understanding the pain you feel, or the sorrow, or the shame, etc. And then the wonder, or doubt, or questioning of whether someone can really love you if they don’t actually understand you. The irony of this feeling makes me chuckle – that we assume we are not understood, and so we are isolated. Yet, everyone feels misunderstood. So, in reality, we do understand each other; we can relate to the feeling of being misunderstood. This is mental gymnastics on a high wire, and it makes me dizzy. Job explains his own situation of isolation and being left out:

“He has put my brothers far from me, and those who knew me are wholly estranged from me. My relatives have failed me, my close friends have forgotten me.”

“My breath is strange to my wife, and I am a stench to the children of my own mother.”

“All my intimate friends abhor me, and those whom I loved have turned against me.”

Job 19:13-14, 17, 19

So Job knows how he feels. He knows how his friends and loved ones treat him. He thinks he knows the purpose and motives of God. But there was something else, something broader that Job knew in the marrow of his own bones. There was a truth that would not let go of him, even in the middle of his suffering and sorrow and shame and doubt. Even when he himself had let go, without strength, support, or comfort. Even still, there was a bigger truth, shining brighter and filling the air, so that he breathed it in to his lungs and lived on it, in the face of death itself. He longed for this truth to be written with an iron pen in stone, so that it could not be forgotten. A memorial. His epitaph, if you will, from his own lips.

“Oh that my words were written! Oh that they were inscribed in a book! Oh that with an iron pen and lead they were engraved in the rock forever!

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and at the last he will stand upon the earth. And after my skin has been thus destroyed, yet in my flesh I shall see God, whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another. My heart faints within me!”

Job 19:23-27

What do you know? What have you convinced yourself of – the things you think you know? And what is true?

It is true that our Redeemer stood with His own two feet on the earth. He walked, and ate, hugged, cried, slept, and healed. He stilled the storm, and stopped the mouths of accusers. He drove out the religious fakers in the temple and lifted little ones onto His lap. He was lifted from the earth onto a cruel cross, His hands and feet pierced, His head torn with thorns. Then He was killed by wicked men for wicked people, me included. He suffered the weight of our sin, bearing every evil thought and action, yes, even that. He was stabbed in His side, so that blood and water flowed. He was laid in a tomb, cut from the rocks for a rich man, lent to the Creator of those very rocks. His body was still, silent, wrapped in grave clothes for three days. When He died, He conquered sin. He fulfilled the law as our perfect sacrifice. He ransomed, saved, delivered, justified, and freed. When He arose, He destroyed death. He gives believers His life, new life, everlasting life. He ascended into heaven, and He will return, once again standing upon the earth. And when I die, I will see Him with my own eyes as Job has already.

Spring is a sure thing. The snow will melt and the daffodils will defrost (I can hope!). But my Redeemer is more certain than the seasons, more sure than the sunrise. And when I see Him, the suffering and sorrow will melt like snow.

“But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, ‘Woman, why are you weeping?’ She said to them, ‘They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.’ Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing…”

John 20:11-14a