Issue 245
Based on Job 30:13
I have never been in an earthquake and I have no desire to experience one. There must be something terrifying about the ground itself shaking; the very place where you put your feet is no longer reliable.
Such was Job’s experience. He lost all his assets, all his children and his health in a short space of time. His integrity remained intact but he was struggling to comprehend the scale of the disaster which had hit him. Commentators argue over whether the book of Job is a history or a parable. Either way, it gives us a graphic description of excruciating pain, which is psychological, mental, emotional and physical. From the third chapter onwards, Job and his friends try to figure out what on earth had happened. Twenty-seven chapters later and they are still trying to figure things out.
Job is retreating further and further into himself. Tortured, not only by the events themselves but how others are looking at him in his humiliating state, he describes how he is now fair game for all, with mocking, finger-pointing and insults.
At this point, as he looks down, he sees the broken road. It is his own path – the one he is walking along – and he recognises that these same insulting enemies have both broken the path beneath his feet and are well on their way to destroying him. It is as if the earthquake has hit and now he can’t move anymore. Job’s friends try to unravel the meaning of it all, but seem to be pointing the finger at Job for bringing this on himself.
For Job’s part, he has sunk so low into self-loathing, pity and distress that he can’t put one foot in front of another anymore.
Make no mistake, there are plenty reading this piece who have been on this broken road. Bullying, bankruptcy, failure, injustice and exhaustion can break up your path. Bereavement and physical illness can drive you to despair, isolation and loneliness. Trying to achieve anything meaningful on a daily basis is an enormous challenge and suicide crosses your mind.
Such is the broken road and although Job’s experience was extreme, you and I know that there is real brokenness on all of our journeys.
But there is a profound truth surrounding the broken road: Job did not break it. His cry was “They break up my road”. This was not his doing, nor his work; it was due to the actions of others. The source of the damage was external. The issues were to do with what stress specialists call exogenous factors. Going even further, there was a spiritual battle taking place over Job’s integrity which he could not see. The voices around him and inside his head were chattering about blame and self-destruction, but this brokenness was perpetrated by outside contractors.
There is a place of darkness and pain in which you can find yourself, which is simply not your fault. You have been sinned against, deliberately or accidentally, or you may be under attack or on trial. It is not because you are wrong that you are suffering but because you are right. Voices beside you or inside you may accuse you or torment you as you search for an explanation. Well meaning “pray-ers” may call you to repent or confess but there are times when you are on a broken road because someone else has broken it.
The pain is still real and the scars still form but there’s a world of difference in perspective if you realise that you are not at fault and have been damaged by others rather than yourself.
This is not the whole of Job’s story but it is the story of the broken road.
Job 30:13
13 They break up my road; they succeed in destroying me — without anyone’s helping them.
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Geoff Shattock
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