WHOA

“[God] has blocked my way so I cannot pass;  he has shrouded my paths in darkness.” (19:8)
 In the book of Numbers there is a well-known scene in which the prophet Balaam tries to make his way along a road, while the angel of the Lord repeatedly blocks his path. Balaam cannot see the angel, but Balaam’s donkey sees him, and three times the donkey balks and refuses to go any further. Finally, we read, “the Lord opened Balaam’s eyes, and he saw the angel of the Lord standing in the road with his sword drawn. So he bowed low and fell face-down” (22:31).

Most people do not know it when the Lord is blocking their path. But Job knew it, and so did David when he wrote in Psalm 139:5, “You hem me in, behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me.” Soren Kierkegaard tells the following parable: If you were to ask a peasant, a cabman, a postilion, a liveryman, “What does the coachman use the whip for?” you would get the same reply from them all: “Of course it is to make the horse go.” But ask the King’s coachman, “What does a coachman use the whip for?” and you shall hear him reply, “Principally, it is used to make the horse stand still.” This is the distinction between being a simple driver and a good driver.

Kierkegaard goes on to explain why it is that the horses of the king stand still at the touch of the lash. It is not primarily because of the stinging pain; rather, it is because these horses understand who it is who wields the whip.

Surely one of the darkest of spiritual riddles is the fact that even Satan, despite having almost unlimited power in this evil world, is nevertheless but a whip in the hands of the Lord. And for what does the Lord use this terrible whip? Principally it is used to make the world stand still. The horse driver cries, “Whoa!” But the Lord cries, “Woe!” Four consecutive chapters in Isaiah, for example, begin with this little word “Woe!” (28–31). It is a way of saying sharply, “Stand still and listen!” For what the disobedient hear as condemnation, the obedient hear as an irresistible stimulus to draw nearer to the Lord. “Be still, and know that I am God,” invites Psalm 46:10 in the midst of turbulence. And at a crucial juncture in Israel’s history the prophet Samuel commands, “Stand still and see this great thing that the Lord is about to do before your eyes” (1 Sam. 12:16).

Sadly, many Christians misinterpret the lash of woe to mean, “Get going! Pull up your bootstraps!” It is taken as a signal to try harder, to master or suppress one’s personal pain and to keep on moving. But when we do this again and again, do we not begin to resent our God as a hard driver, a taskmaster? Hence the seasoned Christian, at merely a touch of the whip, learns to stand still. “Are there not twelve hours of daylight?” asked Jesus at a time of great woe in His own life. “A man who walks by day will not stumble. . . . It is when he walks by night that he stumbles, for he has no light” (John 11:9-10). At this very moment Lazarus was lying mortally sick; yet even Jesus could not go to him right away but had to wait out the spiritual night. His lesson was that the children of God must learn to accept the constraints placed upon them. They must do their work during daylight hours, and at night they must stand still.

This is exactly what Job does, and so the majority of his story takes place in one long, immense stasis. As in the book of Exodus, after the fast-paced events of the opening chapters all action grinds to a halt in the wilderness, and for months on end there is nothing to do but sit tight and wait upon the Lord. Job’s friends are extremely uneasy about all this waiting; they want to see action. But Job waits, and his waiting is not to be confused with inaction. On the contrary, such waiting is a highly intense and concentrated form of action, a truth well captured in the title of a book by Henry Miller: Stand Still Like the Hummingbird. When the hummingbird stands still, it is to extract the nectar.

Mason, M. (2002). The Gospel According to Job: An Honest Look at Pain and Doubt from the Life of One Who Lost Everything. Crossway.