Comfort from Job and Skywoman

The reading this morning in Teach Us to Pray was from Job 23:1-3, 8-10 (and it’s in the NIV Readers translation):

Even today my problems are more than I can handle.

In spite of my groans, God’s hand is heavy on me.

I wish I knew where I could find him!

I wish I could go to the place where he lives!

 

But if I go to the east, God isn’t there.

If I go to the west, I don’t find him.

When he’s working in the north, I don’t see him there.

When he turns to the south, I don’t see him there either.

 

But he knows every step I take.

When he has tested me,

I’ll come out as pure gold.

 

This resonated with me. Even today, in my warm comfortable home, with two of my children still in school in person, with plans to meet a dear friend for a walk, with work and people I love, with so much to be thankful for – ‘my problems are more than I can handle.’ Mark, a friend of our family whom I’ve known since childhood died yesterday. Harvey DeWent died last week and Jay and I weren’t allowed to be there. I’m afraid for a friend who has COVID, dreading that schools might close again, worried Bri won’t ever get to go in person this year, concerned for many of you and wondering when we’ll see each other in person again. My list could go on and on with problems and griefs (anticipated and real) that are or feel like they are more than I can handle.

 

One of the books I’ve been reading these days is Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants by Robin Wall Kimmerer. In it she tells the story of Skywoman, a creation story told by the indigenous peoples of the Great Lakes area. It’s a story of a woman falling from the sky world, who lands on a giant turtle and is kept alive by various creatures, from whom she receives gifts and with whom she shares gifts. And then Kimmerer writes this:

 

Perhaps the Skywoman story endures because we too are always falling. Our lives, both personal and collective share her trajectory. Whether we jump or are pushed, or the edge of the known world just crumbles under our feet, we fall, spinning into someplace new and unexpected. Despite our fears of falling, the gifts of the world stand by to catch us. (p 8,9)

 

The sense that our problems are more than we can handle, the sense of falling, is part of being human, of knowing and accepting our limits, our creatureliness. It’s good to tell the truth about this – we are not in control. We can’t solve all our problems or keep ourselves from falling. And sometimes God’s presence can feel really elusive – like Job says, ‘I don’t find him . . . I can’t see him.’

 

And yet. As Kimmerer puts it, ‘the gifts of the world stand by to catch us.’ I keep returning to Jesus’ words about the birds and the flowers and how God takes care of them, and God can be trusted to take care of us too – day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute. Even when we can’t see God, we can see God’s gifts: breath, food, life.

 

Job promises and testifies: ‘God knows every step I take.’ I found such comfort in this passage when we did a series on Job several years ago, and again today. The reminder that God knows us inside and out, God is paying attention, watching us with a loving gaze. And pointing toward Jesus: who knows what it is to be human, to be limited, to grieve, to live in difficult times when many things are out of our control. Jesus goes before us and he goes with us and he knows what is happening to us – the burdens we bear, the choices we face, the joys and sorrows and gifts of each day.