After the Hurricane

The tornado had ripped through.

The hurricane had subsided.

Lull and quiet.

And then the soul storm begins.

“After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth” (Job 3:1).

It is interesting that Job doesn’t begin his lament until after all his losses, after his friends have sat with him. Was his friends’ silence the last straw? Seven days of silence—perhaps cultures were different, but that is a long, uncomfortable time. Did that emphasize his aloneness in his suffering? Seven days—the period of mourning for a dead person (1). Did they rub in his loss rather than give comfort? Show their despair that nothing could get better, Job was

as good as dead? Seven days—was Job looking for comfort and found only silence?

And did the silence of his friends echo a deeper silence? Did it symbolize the silence of God? Had Job expected God to still step in and somehow make things right again? But an unknown period of time elapses….. And nothing. His friends show up…. And nothing. No words of comfort. No hope.

Job didn’t react in anger or despair after his losses or after he himself was struck. It is only after that unbearable silence that his soul lashes out in angry cutting words. His boils finally burst in a spitting tongue, cursing the day he was born.

It is a complex and manifold picture, but perhaps Job’s losses and his health wasn’t his chief pain or his chief concern. Perhaps he truly meant it when he said, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord” (Job 1:21). Perhaps he still maintained that. So what was the issue? Perhaps it was Job’s relationship with God.

Would God be like his friends and be silent?

Would God vindicate Job and let him know he was still okay—not even restore his blessings, but just let Job know that Job was okay with him?

Job was asking something that no external sign could give. No measure of wealth, no number of children, no degree of health. For those could all be given to the wicked as Job himself realized (Job 21; so also Asaph in Psalm 73; Jeremiah in Jeremiah 12:1; and Jesus in Matthew 5:45). Those outward signs could not attest that Job was okay. Throughout the entire book, Job never asks for his wife to return, for his health, for a new house, for more children. No. Job asks for vindication (Job 6:29; 12:4; 31:6). It is that which he asks for in two of his most famous passages:

“O earth, cover not my blood, and let my cry find no resting place. Even now, behold, my witness is in heaven, and he who testifies for me is on high. My friends scorn me; my eye pours out tears to God, that he would argue the case of a man with God, as a son of man does with his neighbor” (Job 16:18-21).

“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” (Job 19:23-27).

In both, he is asking for his words to be witnessed, heard, remembered. He wants a redeemer or a witness to hear him and plead with him before God. He wants to know he is okay with God.Vindication will say, "I am heard. I am known by God. I am right with God." My God, my God, in a dry land, after the hurricane, in the ruins, I thirst for you.

That is what we all want. We want to know we are okay. Okay with Allah. Okay with the universe. Okay with a father or a mother. Okay with our boss. Okay with whatever we worship. Okay with God. We think if we just get that “I love you” from a father we will be okay. Or if we reach a certain income level we will be okay. If we go to Mecca, do our five daily prayers, be faithful to Allah we will be okay. Take a minute—is there a whisper in your heart, “I will be okay if…..” “If only…..”

Suffering attacks our sense of okayness. This is the book of Job—his sense of okayness was attacked by suffering. That sense of okay is, in other words, our “righteousness.” To be okay is to be in right relationship with—with God, with others, with our idols, etc. Even non-Christians seek righteousness, just in different ways and from different things--and ultimately, no matter what gives that outside okay, only God's okay will ultimately satisfy, no okay from Allah or job or parents or etc. will last.

This sense of okayness/righteousness eludes us. We need that outside voice—the witness in heaven, the son of man pleading with his neighbor, the redeemer who reconciles us and gives us that sense of righteousness, that we are okay with God. No wealth or health will do that. We’ll always doubt. There will always be more—more alms, journeys to Mecca, promotions at work, income levels, vacations, etc. The external signs will always be stripped away—the job, the signs of acceptance, the chocolate from the boyfriend, the money. There will always be that insatiable uncertainty.God alone, God alone, the eternal living water, the Calmer of the Storms, the Lord who rides on the chariots of thunderclouds.

Jesus. He alone meets Job’s deepest question. He is the balm for the angry boils and boiling anger. He alone meets our sense of righteousness. We know we are right because Christ is our righteousness.

For me, my far deepest pain in my life was not when I thought I was dying, when I was so physically weak. It was in college with good grades, leadership positions numerous, accolades, and events. But I was seeking to justify myself as Job sought to (Job 32:1). I felt God was disappointed with me. If hell is to be separated from God, I was in my own little mini-shadow-of-hell. I felt separated from God. I could not please him. I was not enough. Shame. Pain. Bitter anguish poured forth in Job-like words.

Yet, into my story broke the shock of suffering, smaller than Job’s but suffering nonetheless. Suffering taught me how much God loved me. Suffering destroyed my own attempts at seeking righteousness. Showed me the fragility of self. My suffering showed me Job’s Redeemer, his Witness in heaven, who ever lives to plead for me (Heb. 7:25; Rom. 8:34). The silence of suffering was broken—Jesus stepped into it for me. 

So cast it all aside, I want Jesus. If to drink of sufferings means I know Jesus, thank you, Lord. My God! My Bread, my Life, my Portion forever when strength and heart may fail (Ps. 73), my Breath. I pant, I hunger, I search after you. This is my passion, my driving hunger, my propelling joy, my unrelenting strength, the reason I get up in the morning--that my God seeks me out, so that I can know him. Heart leaps to his his heart, as his energy and strength leaps out in bounds in my weakness, as his voice comforts the heart that shrieks in pain and doubt, as he carries me and strokes me with his Spirit with mercy. My Jesus! My Jesus! My vindication will come--I will see God, and see him in a far greater way because I have been made like my Lord more in this suffering (1 Pet. 1:7; Job 23:10; 2 Cor. 4:17-18; Phil. 3:10; Jas. 12-4; Rom. 5:1-5; Rom. 8:28-30). Joy!

These are not light words--I write in the midst of pain and fatigue and lab tests for organ failure pending. But peace in all storms, Jesus my Lord.For he has reached out to me, broken the silence, and has given me new birth. My King of the Storm.