“Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.” Mary Oliver penned these words for the poem Wild Geese. She continues, “Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes…. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again.”
When we are in despair we certainly do not want to be reminded that the world goes on. We want the world to stop and feel our pain. We want to have people console us and know that God is with us. We want to know that we are not alone. Job has experienced great despair; losing his family, his property and his health. As you recall he asked his wife if we are to accept the good from God and not receive the bad? From his despair Job curses the day of his birth, pours out his heart shaking his fist at heaven, defends his integrity, and challenges how his friends view his suffering. For 29 chapters there are debates and rants between Job and his “friends” trying to make sense out the storm that has consumed his life.
The storm that consumed my life was my divorce. Dark clouds covered everything. There certainly was not sun and clear pebbles of rain, more like thunder and wind and clouds that touched every area of my life: where would we live and the boys go to school and where would I work. Who am I now and how do I put my life back together? Where was God and could I cling to my faith? This storm of despair affected my health, my property and my family. The divorce storm touched everything. Built into this storm and every storm is a sense of mystery. You don’t know where the lightning will strike; you don’t know when the rain will fall. Storms are powerful forces that can bring much needed rain, but also many unanswered questions.
God finally answers Job in his despair. Not with solutions per se, but with questions. God asked Job: Who are you (vs. 2), Where were you (vs. 4) and What do you know (vs. 5)? At first this seems insensitive, challenging Job while he is down. I guess I wanted to hear comfort. At a closer look the intimate caring is there. Throughout the book, God is referred to by many names- El, Elohim or Shaddai- but never his most personal name Yahweh. The name too holy to speak, the one we translate to Lord. Yet when God answers Job, he is Yahweh, his personal connection is right there in his name. It would be like saying father all the time, until you were in great pain and then being able to crawl up in God’s lap and cuddle with daddy.
Sometimes the ones closest to us after listening to all of our pain, hearing how we are feeling, and searching for a way forward, will tell us it is time to rejoin life. It is time to see and hear the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, heading home again. It is time to gird your loins, implying there is a strenuous or difficult undertaking ahead, one that God will be right there with you as you take up this challenge. Isn’t that what we want most in our times of despair? We want a vote of confidence from God that we can do it and the promise that God will walk with us on this difficult journey of recovery.
At my preaching conference two weeks ago, Anna Florence Carter, a preaching professor at Columbia Seminary, taught us how to preach the verbs. It is a great way to slow down while reading scripture focusing on the verbs, and what they tell us. She said there are about equal number of nouns and verbs in scripture but we can get distracted on bunny trails with the unfamiliar nouns like cubits and Pharisees when we all can relate to the verbs. We spent a day on Lake Tahoe going through Jonah with Jonah being “swallowed” and God “hurling” Jonah from the fish.
So today I see how Yahweh answered Job not once but twice and how Job answered Yahweh. When God answered Job – the answer came out of the whirlwind. God is often manifested in nature, yet here God answered from the very storm that had consumed Job’s life. Whirlwind and storm are the same noun. God did not answer from far away; God is close at hand, meeting Job in his despair. Answering twice shows a commitment from God and a caring in the midst of his pain. Now the questions God asks seem a little out of place, and yet it is the Creator of the world who answers with, “the world goes on,” the world I created. The geese fly home again, and you are not alone. I am with you and Christ died for your broken moments such as this. Recalling God as Creator, the wonders and mystery of all that God is and formed, demonstrates the power of the one who is speaking with Job. God is the one with an arm of power; the one whose voice thunders out of storms, bringing both comfort and strength. The questions speak to the mystery of the answers we find in creation and worshiping the Creator.
Job’s very answer implies his humble awe of God. “I am of small account, what shall I answer you” (40:4). Job has struggled with God, his despair, his pain and finally gets to dialogue with Yahweh. When he does, he is reminded of God’s mystery, answers and power, and Job echoes the Psalms “What is man that you are mindful of him…”(8:4). The answer: God is always mindful of you especially in your pain and despair.
In our pain and despair I hope we know that God is God: a God of mystery who answers, a God of power while caring, a God who will be with you in your darkest storm.
Mary Oliver closes her poem with “Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls you like the wild geese- harsh and exciting- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.” As faithful people we might alter this slightly, no matter how lonely you are, God’s created world calls you over and over announcing your place in the family of God! Amen.
