Finally …

This week we're privileged to have a guest post by Lorraine O'Keefe, writing on a subject her soul knows well through her faithful walk with Jesus.

Finally ...

As you know, we count as blessed those who have persevered. You have heard of Job’s perseverance and have seen what the Lord finally brought about. The Lord is full of compassion and mercy. James 5:11

It’s a word with sound effects: “finally.” Hear the angst, irritation, echo of empathy, and exhale from sheer exhaustion. What honesty! Its utterance resonates audibly with the very definition: after a long time, typically involving difficulty or delay. In James 5:11, “finally” certainly characterizes Job’s story.

According to the biblical account, Job suddenly loses all of his livelihood, all of his workers, all of his children … and all while each messenger was still speaking to him about his prior devastating loss. Then, Job loses his health. Is it any wonder his wife says, “Curse God and die”? His rippling grief grows tentacles. It becomes contagiously unanswerable.

There’s a relentlessness to such grief—shock, horror, disbelief, anguish, emotional suffocation. Just breathing takes everything in the suffering. It’s a grief beyond words.

When Job’s friends hear of his tragedy, they get together and travel from their homes to comfort and console him. They scarcely recognize him; his physical being demonstrates his consuming grief. They sit on the ground with him for seven days and nights. No one says a word, for they see that his suffering is too great for words.

A week passes and the silence breaks. Job begins to work through his grief aloud with despair and anguish. All too quickly, his friends are uncomfortable in the mystery and magnitude of Job’s sense of grief. So what do they do? They work to make sense of it by placing suffering into a simplistic box of their own understanding.

In Job’s responses to his friends, there are crashing waves of grief: anger, sadness, pleading, bargaining, defending his innocence, asking questions about why the wicked aren’t punished. His soul becomes embittered, yet he speaks of wisdom and understanding. They accuse him of being arrogant, questioning God so incessantly. They remind him of their perception of God’s justice, even in the face of his paralyzing grief. Truly, there are no words for their words.

Can you relate to the suddenness and relentlessness of such loss and paralyzing grief—the unexpected, the unwanted, the undoing, the unfairness? Perhaps it’s the end of a marriage through divorce, death, or both. Or it’s the loss of an aging parent, first cognitively and then physically. The splinters of family that are too deep to give a surface pinch to tweeze out, or the costly betrayal of a friend—oh, the unrelenting sense of grief! A good day is simply getting out of bed…or breathing. Is this a grief you know—a dark night of the soul—one that becomes weeks, months, years, even decades?

So, how is it that, from these words in verse 11, James pens that Job’s perseverance in grief counts as blessed? Back to that word “finally”; it doesn’t say how long Job’s grief lasts. Grief doesn’t just take time—it also takes intention. Yet, “finally” injects hope. It’s real, authentic. It doesn’t deny the questions or doubts, the mystery or misery. It’s a reminder that God is big enough to ask Him, “Finally … will you listen? Will you respond? Will you see?”

God’s response to Job’s unrelenting grief is a paradoxical one. While He dialogs deeply with Job, God never answers all of his pressing questions. Yet Job is seen and known and deeply understood by Him. He isn’t alone in his grief. God is full of compassion and mercy.

In fact, tucked away in Job 42:7, God says that Job is right in what he’s been saying (in his grief) about God, but not Job’s friends. He asks Job to pray for his well-intended yet grief-inspecting  friends with compassion and mercy—so they don’t get what they deserve. That’s relentless perseverance. It demands a living, breathing experience with grief—one that can be often misunderstood by those around you and easier for them (though well-intended) to question, dissect, and inspect in an attempt to make sense of it.

Ultimately, God finally gives the answer when His Son experiences the truest of unjust sufferings marked by unfathomable grief. Job is misunderstood by his friends who are present, but Jesus is betrayed and abandoned by His friends, left hanging on a cross alone. Job is able to converse with God, but there’s no response to Jesus' cry for help. He is forsaken on the cross that we might never be forsaken.

Relentless grief is overwhelming and daunting, paralyzing and lonely—a gasping for breath. Yet Jesus—who is fully God and fully man—temporarily loses His breath to demonstrate that He is sovereign and in control over all things, including the very grief and suffering which is beyond understanding or control. God beckons the brokenhearted to a living, breathing experience with Him. 

And then, finally…it all matters. So, persevere with God, His compassion and mercy. Relentlessly.

Lorraine O’Keefe is a friend of What Then Why Now. In her day job at ThinkinBig Communications, she guides purposeful businesses to build brands people want to experience.. She leads a creative collaborative of branding and marketing experts who create words that are well chosen, well placed, and well measured that, in turn, create good in the world.