When your own explanation collapses, where are you?

When words run out, the pen comes to a stop.Even so, morning comes.

— Job 10 —

Job continues to speak.

“I loathe my own life.”

“Why did You bring me out of the womb?”

Job begins to question himself.

Suffering is not only external.

It enters within.

The words of his friends did not reach him.

Next, Job turns toward himself.

Why did this happen?

Where did I go wrong?

The questions turn inward.

In suffering, a person begins to doubt oneself.

Was it my fault?

Was something lacking?

However, those questions

begin to confine the self.

Job is still speaking toward God.

Yet that speech

is being drawn back into himself.

In chapter 6, Job stood within his own explanation.

In chapter 10, that explanation collapses.

Job, who once said,

“I have not denied the words of the Holy One,”

now asks, “Why did You bring me out of the womb?”

When explanation collapses,

a person no longer knows where to stand.

When your own explanation collapses,

where are you?

Do you close within yourself?

Or do you turn again toward God,

standing in the place where awareness begins to rise?

Job has begun to question himself.

In chapter 6, he explained his own righteousness.

In chapter 10, that explanation begins to fall apart.

The place to stand

disappears.

Perhaps he is drawing nearer to God.

God was still silent.