Hope in Suffering

Job 14:7-15, 19:23-27

 “Hope in Suffering”

17 July 2016 St. Andrew’s Military Chapel Singapore

Last week after the service I was talking with someone who said that he really liked Job. After sitting in lament to get ready for last week, I wasn’t so sure that I agreed with him. Yes, I love the range of emotions that Job models for us, but after sitting with lament and how to present that I wasn’t the biggest fan of the book of Job. But, that comment had me take a different look at Job.

Job draws people in, not just because of the raw emotions Job experiences and relates during his conversations with his friends and God. We experience a range of emotions coming forth from his lament because we have all cried out to God in pain and suffering wanting not just relief from our condition or situation but also in our search for answers.

His response is natural and how most people would react in similar circumstances. And I think that is why people connect with Job and want to read his story and learn from how he handles the tragic situation in which he finds himself. I can read Job, find myself, and hope that I would respond like him.

 When I find myself in the midst of a personal or community tragedy, it is easy to get stuck in the lament and crying out to God that is the natural response to those situations. Sometimes, it’s hard to see past the situation, even more so if you have friends such as Eliphaz, Bildad, and Zophor offering you advice. They started off well in listening to Job for seven days. But, they soon tired of sitting with Job and his grief and lost sight of what was happening in the grieving process.

How I express grief and the questions I ask of God will be much different than the grief and questions asked by anyone else. Humans truly do grieve differently so we must sit with them for as long as they are in the grieving process. As people work through their grief in their own way and on their timeline, something beautiful starts to blossom.

These two passages from Job are glimpses into the beauty that can emerge in the midst of grief. For chapter after chapter of poetic discussion and questioning, a small seed was planted in Job and began to germinate. The seed was planted early on when Job refused to curse God, even after his wife encouraged him to just curse God, die, and get this whole thing over with. The seed of hope was planted with his refusal to give in and give up.

As his friends tried to convince him that he had done something wrong, his continual insistence that he has undergone a tragedy and refusal to ask forgiveness and seek repentance when none is needed germinated and watered that seed of hope. So much so that now the seedling is bursting through and the first shoots of life break through the soil. A sign of life in the desolate, desert landscape of grief has arrived.

Job expresses hope that he will have his audience with God, if not to answer his questions, at least he will have a fair audience to argue his case and ask the hard questions directly. The fact that he has found hope in the midst of such a tragedy itself speaks to the power of God. Because he found hope not through his friends, but through time with God in suffering.

The thing people tend to either forget or overlook when dealing with someone else’s difficult circumstances, beyond realizing they will grieve and heal on their own timeline, is that wise pithy words rarely help someone find hope in difficult times.

Trite phrases do as much good as Job’s friends did in his situation. The last thing someone wants to hear when they are awash with grief is, “I’m sure it’s all part of God’s plan,” “they’re in a better place now,” “just count all your blessings,” “they wouldn’t want you to be sad,” “buck up buttercup, turn that frown upside down” (or something more dignified, but that sounds the same to a person in grief), or “I know how you feel.”

If even in the midst of Job’s struggle, hope found a way into the conversation with God, perhaps if we just step back a bit from trying to quickly make everyone feel better and let God work, hope will blossom in any tragedy.

This past week I saw an article from the former dean of my seminary in which he described hope in a broken situation. “The virtue of hope enables us to face the brutal facts of our lives, of the world, and of brokenness and failures, which harm those entrusted to our care as well as ourselves. And yet we don't give into despair as pessimists or cynics, because our faith in God points us to the future that God has called us, and the whole Creation, to live towards."

As we take the time to sit with loved ones in the midst of grief, we are then able to experience the first signs of hope alongside them because we have experienced grief alongside as well. When we are with them in the depths, we can point to the signs of hope that we both see together.

When someone who has lost a loved one is able to finally look at a photo and lovingly reminisce rather than break down at the sight of their beloved. When a grieving parent who is facing raising children alone notices how their child(ren) remind them of why they fell in love with their partner to begin with. When a national tragedy sparks a real conversation in a family or community that would not otherwise have occurred.

Only by sitting with those in the midst of lament and allowing room for God to work will we have both the opportunity to witness and the credibility to point people to signs of hope in the midst of tragedy. And those signs do appear. Sometimes they arrive in full bloom and in full view of all around. Other times they are just glimpses of green in a desert of despair.

Our job in helping Job is not just to sit and wait, though that is a large part of our job. Our job is to be on the lookout for those shoots of hope and to point people to them. To water and feed that hope and let it germinate and fully grow on its own timescale.

Job gets there without any help from his friends, and as we read in the next chapter, his friends don’t recognize what happened and are set on proving to Job that he is not grieving properly.

What would it have looked like if his friends would have sat there and had the sight to see these glimpses of hope and point it out to Job? Maybe they won’t later be told by God, “I will accept Job’s prayer not to deal with you according to your folly; for you have not spoken of me what is right.”

Let us do right not only by the ones we love, but also by God in patiently sitting in grief and lament so that as hope springs forth from the ground, not only do we not miss the sapling’s first taste of sunlight but we tend that hope and point towards the hope that has sprung forth from tragedy.