Job 37 | Wayfarer

The Almighty is beyond our reach and exalted in power;
in his justice and great righteousness, he does not oppress.
Job 37:23 (NIV)

Yesterday, among our local gathering of Jesus’ followers, we focused on a the strange and wondrous description of John provides of his experience being given a glimpse of God’s heavenly throne room in Revelation 5. His description echoes some of the same themes as Isaiah’s similar experience in Isaiah 6. In order to help us imagine the descriptions, the room yesterday was set up “in the round” just as the John describes the multitudes encircling the throne. A censer was lit with incense just as the text describes the prayers of the people rising like incense. The smoke continued to waft upward during the service. In John’s vision, angels never stop proclaiming God’s holiness and eternal presence repeating “Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord God Almighty. Who was, and is, and is to come.” Our gathering sang multiple songs proclaiming and praising God’s holiness.

Holiness is a concept that is I’ve long misunderstood. As a child, I was taught that holiness was basically synonymous with moral purity. Our children’s generation have, with some justification, decried the “purity culture” with which institutional church culture was obsessed for a while. There is an entire sub-culture of individuals from their generation writing books and podcasting their anger. As a result, there are many who have walked away from the church and their faith. In my observation and contemplation of this generational reformation, one of the institutional churches mistakes was an emphasis on moral purity that was at least partially rooted in this misconception of “holiness” as “moral purity.”

The word “holy” is easily misunderstood precisely because it is hard to easily define with words. This, I find, is a lot like God Himself. In his Holy Shift tour, Rob Bell uses a lot of human experiences to describe “holy” moments when, as humans, we know that there is something happening that is far greater, more powerful, and other worldly than ourselves. This is the gateway to that which is “holy.”

One moment that comes to mind is the moment my mother breathed her last this past March, with my dad and sister and I sitting next to her. When suddenly there is one less person in the room, but the same number of bodies, than where a moment ago is a holy moment. Likewise, when a woman gives birth and there is one more life in the room is a holy moment. I remember sitting in a car with my friend on the easter shore of Lake Michigan at sunset staring at the Chicago skyline in the distance and watching a massive, angry, severe thunderstorm moving our way with non-stop lighting and thunder and churning clouds. It filled me with awe and wonder that I have never, ever forgotten. These experiences do begin to allow me to understand was “holy” really means. It reminds me of Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart whose definition of pornography was “I know it when I see it.” It’s that way with holiness. The simple description is perpetually elusive, but when you encounter a holy moment, you know it.

Today’s chapter marks the end of Eli the younger’s run-on discourses in response to the suffering Job. I have to admit that, while young Eli is not “perfect in knowledge” like he thinks he is and claims to be, he did save his best stuff for last. In wrapping up his words to Job, Eli points Job to the awe inspiring wonders of creation to describe a holy God who is beyond our human imaginations. He basically says to Job that Job’s complaints are puny and hollow in relation to a holy God.

In the quiet this morning, I find myself wrestling with this elusive definition of holy. Holy is certainly exceedingly, abundantly, beyond the simple notion of a teenager meeting the moral standards of his or her parent’s or church’s perfectionistic checklist. That paltry definition calls for reformation and a “holy shift.” It felt to me like young Eli was getting close in today’s chapter, perhaps as close as any finite human can. And that is what I’m going to take with me into this week. I’m asking God for some holy moments. I’m seeking them out. I have my spiritual antennae up.

I’m not sure how to define or anticipate what those holy moments might be, but I’ll know them when I experience them.

If you know anyone who might be encouraged by today’s post, please share.

“At this my heart pounds
    and leaps from its place.
Listen! Listen to the roar of his voice,
    to the rumbling that comes from his mouth.
He unleashes his lightning beneath the whole heaven
    and sends it to the ends of the earth.
After that comes the sound of his roar;
    he thunders with his majestic voice.
When his voice resounds,
    he holds nothing back.”
Job 37:1-4 (NIV)

While I was in college I had a friend whose family owned a cabin on the southeastern shores of Lake Michigan. One evening we were visiting their cabin and parked along some cliffs that afforded an expansive view of the western horizon, the Great Lake, and the Chicago skyline in the distance. It was a gorgeous, calm evening but behind the skyscrapers of Chicago we saw black clouds rising. Over the next couple of hours we watched a massive midwestern thunderstorm develop before our eyes. The dark clouds rose like mighty pillars and giant tentacles of lighting spread out like a breath-taking fireworks display across the evening sky. As the storm enveloped the city and began to cross the lake, the wind rose and giant white caps began to break against the shore beneath us. The thunder was deafening.

God says that His eternal nature is evident in creation, in what He has made. That night looking out over Lake Michigan I remember thinking that we were witnessing a tour de force of God’s might. I’ve never forgotten that experience, and as I read the opening lines of Elihu’s conclusion in this morning’s chapter, my mind took me right back to that night.

Elihu’s final words regarding the thunder of God’s voice foreshadows the final chapters of Job’s epic poem. After 37 chapters of silence in response to Job’s questions and the long debate with his friends, God is about to open His mouth to speak.

As I write this post it is the morning of New Year’s Eve day. I look back on a strange and somewhat difficult year in 2014. I stand on the precipice of 2015 with more questions than answers. It’s perhaps apropos that the year had ended with a journey through Job’s epic poem, with questions, and with struggle. It is equally appropriate that the current year ends waiting to hear from the Almighty, and that the new year will begin with God’s voice. Whether God’s voice arrives in the thunder of a midwest storm or the whisper of a still, small voice, I’m anxious to hear what God has to say. I’m looking forward to what the new year will bring.