The Soul’s Journey to Union with God
Rev. Christina Miller | October 20, 2024 | Job 38:1-7 (34-41)
There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. He was blameless and upright, feared God and turned away from evil. He had a pleasant and abundant life full of children, livestock, and servants. You would be hard pressed to find a man more righteous than Job. But one day Satan, or the Accuser, challenged God to take away all that Job had in order to see if Job would curse God when things were not going in his favor, and God agreed. Immediately, in quick succession, Job received news that he had lost his animals, his sons and daughters, and his house. With these losses he lost his sense of security, home, and safety, and his most cherished relationships. In the course of less than ten verses, Job’s life completely fell apart. He was left with only himself and God.
As the poet Yeats says, “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” and so this was only the beginning. Next Satan convinced God to take away Job’s health, leading Job to sit on an ash heap in physical pain and psychological torment, lamenting his life and wishing he had never been born. All the while God remained silent. Now Job was left with only his pain and the absence of God. And we are left questioning: How can God allow such suffering? Why doesn’t God intervene? And why does God remain silent? I think these are questions we can all relate to in our own lives. Whenever I have unanswerable questions about God that can’t be addressed by my intellect or reason I like to turn to the mystics, who existed within divine mystery.
Christian mystics, including St John of the Cross who wrote The Dark Night of the Soul, describe the soul going through different stages of growth as our souls journey into closer relationship to God. These stages represent different experiences we have throughout our lives, so they aren’t necessarily linear or even separate from one another. I find them helpful as they give me guideposts of what I can expect as I grow spiritually and maybe you will feel the same. While different writers describe them using their own language and images, the three stages are: purgation, illumination, and union.
Up to this point in Job’s story we have seen the first two. In purgation you clear out what no longer is supporting your life in God and intentionally do the things that will support your life in God. This is the stage in which we meet Job at the beginning of his story. He is blameless and upright, fears God, and turns away from evil. He has good habits, solid spiritual practices, and well-defined values. He is a man of integrity. Job could have stayed at this stage for the rest of his life, enjoying his blessings and abundance and living morally, but his soul wouldn’t have had much opportunity to grow beyond this. If nothing ever disrupted his life there would be no catalyst for change, and no way to know God in the full range of his human experiences.
And so, we enter into the second stage of the soul’s journey called illumination. This stage is often marked by various trials that purify your soul at a deeper level. These trials force you to let go of your attachment to all the things that are not God so that you can receive what is real and eternal. This is where we find Job for the majority of his narrative as unprecedented trials have taken away his wealth, home, family, and health, forcing him to let go of any of his earthly attachments. He cries out to God and longs for God’s healing presence. Until, out of nowhere, with violent strength and power, God comes to Job in a tempestuous whirlwind. It is from within the whirlwind that God finally speaks. And it is from within the illuminative stage, when what you once believed has been radically turned upside down, and things you have held onto have been taken away, and your life has been dissolved, that you arrive at insights about who God really is.
God answers Job saying, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements—surely you know!” God is challenging Job, pushing him to see his place in the order of creation. Job is one small part of a much bigger picture. His life is just one little blip in a cosmic narrative. Job was not there when God laid the foundations of the earth. He does not have access to this divine knowledge, and his experience is limited to the lifespan of a mere mortal. Job’s suffering had narrowed his perspective so that his entire universe had become his own pain. Now God is lifting his vision higher. God is showing him the divine presence in all of creation. God is present in the morning stars and the heavenly beings, in the clouds and rains and lightening, in the lions and ravens and their prey, because God brought them all into being and sustains them on their course. While Job perceived God to be absent in his suffering God was actually present all around him.
And so we enter into the final stage of the soul’s journey, alongside Job, called union. This is when you come to realize that you have never been separate from God and it is impossible for God to abandon you, because God simply is, and we simply exist in God. Union is like finding the eye of a storm. While the world may be in chaos around you, and your world may be being torn apart, you have found your center in God. You are secure and can access peace, and nothing can pull you away from this center. In union, God’s presence isn’t determined by external circumstances or things going well. It is just the reality of your being and is immovable within you.
While you may never understand or agree with the hard things that happen in your life and in the lives of others, you have come to accept them. You no longer label the blessings in your life as good and the hardships as bad, because even they cannot be separated from God. Even the hardships can be welcomed as catalysts of change and transformation. Like Job, you are humbled by this knowledge, and you are freed to realize that God is made manifest in ways that are beyond your limited understanding.
Your very definition of God may change. As the depth psychologist Carl Jung said: “To this day God is the name by which I designate all things which cross my willful path, violently and recklessly, all things which upset my subjective views, plans, and intentions, and change the course of my life for better or worse.” And so Job answers God, “I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted […] I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.” Job has been transformed and he now has spiritual vision. His suffering has led him to an experiential knowing of God. He has reached greater depths of his soul’s journey. He humbly knows his place in the universe. He can fully surrender to a higher power. Job could have spent his whole life in the first chapter, full of blessings and abundance, but look at what he would have missed.
So may we hear the story of Job and be given courage to undergo our own soul’s journey. In the words of theologian Reinhold Niebuhr, may we “accept hardship as the pathway to peace.”
