The story and suffering of Job stands as one of the greatest paragons of suffering in all of the Bible. Job suffers greatly, grieves lengthily, and wrestles tirelessly with his plight and misfortune—yet, does not sin against God. But in chapter 19—in the midst of a long, tenuous cycle of grief—Job says something profound about how he’s managing his grief. It’s a profound, practical principle that we, as sufferers, can implement for persevering in the midst of our own grieving processes as well.
He says,
23 “Oh that my words were written!
Oh that they were inscribed in a book!
24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
When it comes to grief, Job advocates for the importance of one action but on two mediums: namely, the importance of writing, and the appropriate platforms for doing so (i.e., either paper or stone). Job is hinting at two main things we can glean as we navigate the grieving process constructively: Externalizing our grief and memorializing our story.
- Externalizing Our Grief
Instead of bottling up his grief so that it was only a hidden, personal matter, Job desires to externalize his grief and ‘let it all out.’ Most of us have felt the same way at some point in our own grieving processes as well.
Externalizing our grief is a natural tendency, and it can be a therapeutic way of processing. But it can also be destructive and unfruitful—not necessarily because you are externalizing your grief, only where and how. As Job suggests, there are certain platforms and mediums that are appropriate for externalizing our grief, and others that are not.
Here are some particularly unhealthy, modern-day ways we are usually tempted to externalize our grief.
- Writing lengthy Facebook posts, demonizing someone else.
- Sub-tweeting about certain people or situations that have caused you pain. (Subtweeting means making indirect comments about someone or something without directly saying it. It’s a way of saving face without getting into trouble—even though everyone else knows what you’re referring to.)
- Sharing too much information with too many people who don’t know you or the painful situation too well.
- Grieving to someone who is marginally involved (or not involved at all) as an entryway of gossip—in order to further bolster your case and find justification for feeling the way that you do in the eyes of someone else.
This week, I witnessed a pastor tweeting about his own lawsuit case, and it was an angry 140-character flurry of tweets switching from grief to gaslighting. I felt bad for him, because in his attempts to externalize his grief, he was making a fool out of himself to many people who aren’t even aware of the situation.
Why is externalizing our grief destructive in these cases? Because of where and how. When we externalize our grief on social media or on the internet, it is like externalizing our grief in stone. Job’s word of advice when it comes to externalizing our grief, however, is that we do so on paper.
According to Job, a healthy way of externalizing our grief is writing our thoughts down in a journal, with pen and paper.
The main difference between externalizing our grief on social media versus writing in a journal is who it’s for. If you’re externalizing your grief on social media, it’s usually to justify yourself, to seek attention, or to bolster your case. If you’re gossiping to a friend, then it’s usually about ‘revenge therapy’ for your grief. But if you’re journaling… you’re finally being honest.
Contrary to social media or gossip, journals are good for privacy and honesty. But they’re also good for clarity.
Professional counselors will tell you to keep a journal when you go through something traumatic because it helps you decipher your own experience, feelings, and thoughts. When we suffer, our mind goes haywire. It’s mental and emotional chaos. We cannot think straight. It is one unconnected idea and one unconnected feeling, in a disarray—ad infinitum.
But when we write down our thoughts and feelings in a journal, something strangely satisfying happens: we start making sense—as we write, not before we write. How? It is because writing forces you to think clearly. If we do not write, and only keep our thinking, processing, and grieving in our heads, then it will be non-linear, non-sensical, and therefore, not productive. This is because when we’re only keeping our grief in our heads, we don’t necessarily have to make sense; we don’t have to think straight; we don’t have to ‘connect the dots’ or even evaluate the substantiality of our emotions.
However, when we write, it’s different. This is because writing necessarily forces us to be logical, to think clearly, and to make sense. Writing makes us much more highly aware of our own illogic and irrationality. Writing elucidates our emotions and draws out the ‘why’ that is buried deeply beneath the pain. So, as you write, you learn. Writing becomes an enlightening process.
So, a practical point while we suffer: Spend more time in the journal, and less time on social media. Spend more time judging our own thoughts than seeking justification from the thoughts of others.
But there’s another idea at play in Job’s statement about the importance of writing. He conveys the desire to not just write in a scroll (or, in our case, a journal) but also the desire to write in stone with an iron stylus.
24 Oh that with an iron pen and lead
they were engraved in the rock forever!
What does Job mean here? What’s the difference between writing with pen and paper and writing with iron, lead, and stone? Durability and permanence. This leads to his second practical principle for how to grieve in a healthy way:
- Memorialize Our Story
Job desires that his story be told. He desires that there come some kind of meaning, some kind of helpfulness for generations after him. He doesn’t want his suffering to be in vain. He’s learned so much that he needs to write it down, and he wants others to glean practical wisdom from it. He desires some kind of eternal significance from this terrible suffering. And so, he desires to write his story ‘in stone’ so it can be durable, permanent, and timeless. In other words, Job is saying that it would be a tragedy if his suffering was forgotten.
One of the worst things we can do in our suffering is to forget it altogether once we’re on the other side. Why? Because then, our suffering will have been all for naught, all in vain. When we forget, we erase from our memory and our hearts some of the most valuable things we could ever hold on to, such as: what we learned by going through it, how we felt, the promises we clung to, the friends who were there, and how God answered prayer and provided in unique, providential ways. Forgetting these things is tragic; but forgetting is natural and normal.
Writing, however, helps us remember.
Whether it is 5 weeks, 5 months, 5 years or even 50 years removed from a trial, writing allows us to look back with both clarity and certainty and say, “God, thank you! God, I am different because of this! I learned [this] and [that] and [this]! I remember how You provided [here] and [there]! I remember that time You proved faithful [here] and [there] and [here]. I clung to [this promise] and [that promise]. I remember how grueling that season was, but how close You were; how I was in so much pain, but how You were so providentially at work!”
Once you have done the hard work of ‘pen and paper’ grieving in a journal, over time you will find truths, promises, wisdom that you do want to memorialize and remember forever. If, for example, you were to look back at journal entries at an early stage in the grieving process, you would be very thankful those words are not in stone. However, there are some things you learned from that season that ended up meaning a lot to you (such as words, phrase, images, promises, verses)—and those things you should write in stone.
We don’t need a literal chisel and literal slab of marble in order to apply this principle of ‘writing in stone.’ So, what is the ‘stone’ that you can write upon so that you will not easily forget? What needs to be memorialized? And how can you do so, so that you will not forget?
- Maybe it’s a blogpost or a book.
- Maybe it’s a picture that you need to use as the lock-screen on your phone.
- Maybe it’s a tattoo—permanently memorializing an important season in your life or something that God taught you.
- Maybe it’s a banner with a Bible verse that hangs over a doorway or on a wall, memorializing a promise that spoke to you powerfully in a season of darkness; such that, every time you walk by it, you are reminded of the particular faithfulness of God.
- Maybe it is a framed picture of a location where you felt God’s presence or heard His voice or even hit rock bottom—to remind you how far you’ve come and how far He has brought you ever since.
Writing ‘in stone’ is a way to memorialize God’s past grace, so that you do not easily forget it. Being reminded of past grace is an important exercise of faith—because it fuels encouragement and perseverance in present pains and future struggles.
Job’s plea was that his story would be memorialized in stone—and in many ways, it has. His suffering was not ‘literally’ written in stone, but it has been written in something even more durable and permanent: The Word of God, which has been distributed in more areas and printed in more languages than any other book in human history. If his story were etched in one stone, it would have been much less permanent and much less impactful than being included in the Bible. But even more than that, one day God would even write Job’s story and its truths through the Holy Spirit upon the hearts of His own people—something the prophet Jeremiah even promised (Jeremiah 31:33). God answered Job’s plea above and beyond—without him even knowing it.
Job externalizes his grief with pen and paper, but he memorializes his story in with iron and stone. The problem comes when we do the opposite, memorializing grief in stone but externalizing our story only on paper. As Christians, our grief is not final; but our stories in Christ are. Don’t write your grieving process on social media or the internet. Don’t put it in stone. Put it in a journal. But do write your story, your testimony in stone—not just for your sake, but for the sake others who need to read it.
