A Witness in Heaven
My prayer book has me reading through Job in my evening prayer. I love Job. The very first sermon series I preached when we planted New City Covenant Church was in the book of Job. It’s considered one of the oldest books in the Bible and yet I find it so relevant for our lives today.
Some people dismiss its relevance because of the magnitude of Job’s misfortune. We may think, “The pain I feel in my life is relatively small compared to Job. I would never presume to draw parallels between my story and Job’s.” But that’s exactly what you and I are supposed to do. We’re meant to think, “If his strategy of facing suffering worked for him, then it will work for me.” It’s like God gave us a story of such profound suffering that none of us would feel left out when we are in pain.
This means you and I are supposed to insert ourselves into his story. We are supposed to see Job as a model for how to face suffering and hardship. When we feel rejected by a friend, face physical illness, or lose a job, wealth, or a loved one, we are supposed to say, “I feel like Job.” And then, we are supposed to do what he did. We are invited to turn towards God in persistent, hopeful prayer over and over again.
And the great promise that I find in Job is the way his prayer draws him into intimacy with Jesus. We see this in his prophetic longing for a mediator which repeatedly shows up. The passage in Job 19 about “knowing his redeemer lives” is familiar, but there are other passages that express Job’s encounter with Jesus as well.1
My favorite comes in Job 16, where he expresses his need to feel seen and known in his hurt. He says this:
19 Even now my witness is in heaven;
my advocate is on high.
20 My intercessor is my friend
as my eyes pour out tears to God;
21 on behalf of a man he pleads with God
as one pleads for a friend.Job 16:19-21
What Job experiences seems to be a mystical encounter with Christ so that he can say:
“My witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend…”
This is exactly what Job needed. The earthly friends who came to comfort him just couldn’t understand what he was going through. They grieve his loss alongside him but as soon as they start talking it is clear that they don’t get it. They give advice. They explain how the world works. They claim to defend God by promising the world is just. But none of this helps Job. The result is he feels more alone in the world.
But when Job prays, he feels less alone. Something happens in his prayer. He experiences a mystical companionship with Jesus, and he comes to believe that there is One who “knows” what he is going through.
This is what each of us needs when we find ourselves dealing with pain, trauma, or suffering of any kind. We need to know that we are seen.
When we are suffering something terrible, we will struggle to put our experience into words. We may try to explain what we feel to another person, but our words often fall short of capturing the agony of our experience. If our suffering unfolds publicly, then a multitude of people may know about our pain, but they won’t “know us.” This is one of the great points of pain in suffering. We often feel so isolated by it. We endure some tremendous hardship, which is awful, but then what’s worse is that we feel abandoned by the world and those close to us.
The invitation from Job is to pray our hardship so that we can join him in saying:
“My witness is in heaven; my advocate is on high. My intercessor is my friend…I am known.”
As a spiritual director, I sit with people and listen to them share their pain. I do my best to listen closely to what they are saying. I pay attention to the tone of their voice or other body language that communicates their experience. I want to bear witness to what they are experiencing, but there is always a limitation in my capacity to know what their experience fully entails. Suffering is so personal. The way we experience hardship is the result of a lifetime of formation and no other human can fully understand what our experience of it feels like.
And this is why in spiritual direction, I always invite the directee to bring what they are experiencing into conversation with our Lord. He is the witness we need to notice. There is a way that we can turn in prayer towards Jesus and experience him seeing us in all our hurt and pain – not only seeing but also bearing witness to the Father about what we are going through. In prayer, we can enter into this Trinitarian dance whereby Jesus advocates on our behalf. He knows you and he is for you.
What are you facing that feels invisible to the world around you? Who might help you prayerfully turn your attention to Jesus who is himself beholding you in your suffering?
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash