Sitting in the driver’s seat as my husband backed the boat into the water, my heart pounded with apprehension. The launch ramp was short and the levee across the narrow slough was only a few feet away. The tight space to maneuver made me nervous, especially with other boats in the water nearby. I breathed a sigh of relief once I tied up at the miniscule dock to wait for my husband.
Only a few hundred yards away, a much wider channel on the Delta beckoned us, promising a day of boating in the summer sun. I had to remind myself of the fun that awaited us every time I felt dread about launching the boat.
It may seem funny that I imagined that scene as I read Elihu’s words of wisdom to Job:
“He is wooing you from the jaws of distress to a spacious place free from restriction, to the comfort of your table laden with choice food.” (Job 36:16 NIV)
He encourages Job that his season of hardship will draw him out of dire straits and into a broad place. It’s a surprising use of the word “wooing.” Why would he need to be wooed from distress? Wouldn’t he run from it on his own? After researching the meaning of “woo” in the original language, I discovered it’s defined as “to stimulate, seduce, move, persuade, or provoke.” Elihu’s metaphor shows that it is only by passing through the jaws of distress that we can enter the fullness of the “spacious place.” It’s not so different from labor contractions that help with delivering a baby.
Bible commentator W.F. Adene provides a deeper understanding of the contrasting metaphors depicting a life in narrow straits and one in spacious places. He explains that various influences combine to make life “narrow” for us. These things include:
Selfishness: The tendency to think about ourselves overshadows the world around us. If we’re living “chiefly for our own ends, we are shut into a small circle of personal, private interests, and, the great world being ignored, we ourselves shrink into littleness.”
Worldliness: When we’re consumed by the things of this world and overlook the eternal, we become short-sighted. Our thoughts and interests are “shut in to the domain of the visible and temporal.”
Conventionality: Our worldview narrows when we lose the courage of personal conviction and “fall back on the ideas and practices” of the world around us.
Routine: When all goes smoothly in our lives, “the mill grinds on in a dreamy atmosphere of changeless indifference.” We grow apathetic if nothing rouses us to see beyond ourselves.
Consequently, there are times when “God delivers us from narrowness by means of affliction.” The Lord sees how hurtful and limiting narrowness is to us, so He uses difficulties to spur us onward and out of our rigid, stunted ways of thinking. Like the birthing process, the pressure of our hardships awakens us and goads us to move forward. “Then, as it cures our errors, it leads us out of its own constraints.”
Adene goes on to explain that God’s deliverance takes us to a more spacious place in three ways:
Liberty of Action: Jesus tells us in John’s gospel “You will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” (John 8:38, NIV) Freedom of the soul comes when we look beyond ourselves. “There is a large place with great scope for work, which can only be enjoyed in unselfishness and unworldliness.”
Breadth of View: Our vision is broadened and deepened through experiencing sorrow. “Although at first it may be cramped and confined to the immediate present by the absorbing influence of pain, when deliverance comes, this is followed by a wonderful mental expansion. No one knows the depth and breadth of life who has not been through the waters of affliction.”
Largeness of Joy: Emerging from the confines of a painful season, we discover a new sense of freedom. As we grow out of stunted and limited ways of thinking, our ability to experience the deep joy of the Lord grows. Our minds become spacious places as we become more accepting of the variety of ways God works.
Seasons of suffering and hardship open our eyes and give us new perspective on ourselves, our circumstances, our relationships, and God. They teach us in ways that good times can’t.
Lisa Harper explains, “Whether the genesis of the pain and hardship you’ve had to walk through was caused through no fault of your own, like Job’s agony, was the consequence of bad, perhaps even sinful, decisions, or was the result of God’s sovereign, albeit mysterious pruning, we all have a choice in how we respond after we’ve been injured. We can choose to isolate in shame, become prickly and accusatory because of guilt, or move toward God in the tenderhearted posture of humility, trust, and repentance—the only path to healing and restoration.” (p. 116)
Perhaps God is using difficult circumstances to woo you into a more spacious place where the richness of a broader perspective awaits. Consider how He might be urging you toward freedom as you enjoy Austin French’s “Freedom Hymn.”
This post is primarily an adaptation of a sermon entitled “A Broad Place” by W.F. Adene. You can read the original outline by clicking here.
Lisa Harper, Job: A Story of Unlikely Joy, Lifeway Press 2018.