A shared sorrow…(Job 17-18)

“My spirit is broken and my days are extinct.” (Job 17:1)

It’s funny, isn’t, how this resonates with so many of us. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never had all I own and most of my family obliterated in the same moment, yet somehow Job’s words speak to some feeling in me. Some deep distress, even as I sit in my wonderful home, with my wonderful husband in the next room, with full cupboards and a healthy family. Middle class guilt perhaps, or something deeper. Something closer to the bone.

I think we all recognise, somewhere within, that deep sadness. It’s hard to admit it when things are going well, that we’re not happy happy through and through, but there it is. It’s why we all love sad songs and sad films, well some of us more than others. If someone recommends me a book and proceeds to tell me how tragic it is I run for the hills; why do I want to spend my leisure time having my heart-broken by the lives of fictional characters?? But I do love to indulge in a melancholy melody. The catharsis of hearing someone else’s lyrics mirror your own pain is a great release.

And that’s part of what Job gives us. I feel silly even writing it because I have had nothing to cause me suffering as Job has. Don’t get me wrong, I can put a suffering spin on my life if I want to; grew up in a single parent family with money worries in London, Dad never lived with me, hard time a school blah blah blah. Or the non-spun version; wonderful creative childhood with loving mother and dedicated (if absent) father, never wanted for anything although money was tight, very academically successful at school. It’s important to notice when my mind craves drama, or even trauma, and so concocts its own. But still, there is a deep longing in me. I often have moments of depression. Just moments (and I am grateful that they are so fleeting), but they are there.

Is it just me? I doubt it, or Leonard Cohen and Radiohead and Jonny Cash would have a much smaller fan base. I have a theory that most people’s favourite song is a sad one, in fact I’ve attached a poll to this post to test my theory, please take part in it! Because there is something seductive about sadness, but also because there’s a bit all of us that is sad.

There are many reasons for our personal melancholies, many stories attached to our sorrow. But I think, I really believe that there is one reason we all share. It is a deep longing. What some people would call being in original sin, I suppose, though I think that phrase has too many centuries of shame and dogma attached to be useful to many people. I think we sense that we are not as close to God as we could be, that we have made barriers between ourselves and Our Lord. We long for closeness we sense is achievable and yet we believe so many lies that few of us ever feel it for more than moments.

Perhaps this is why the experience of finding faith in Jesus can be so euphoric. Because he is a gateway to God for so many of us, because he has broken down barriers that we could not, or would not perhaps. But we Christians must be honest and say that this euphoria is fleeting; it is not a lifetime’s supply or a reward for ‘signing up’. I think the taste is enough to beckon us closer, though in the end the presence of God is bigger than anything we could feel, and present always; whatever our experience. Perhaps it is this sense, of God’s presence and yet the feeling of separation, that  causes our deep longing and sadness. This is certainly something that Job experiences acutely and expresses with a wonderful lucidity that taps into something we all know well. Don’t we? Perhaps I have made a personal experience universal, but I expect not…

And now for my first poll…enjoy…