“My friends are like a false riverbed
like a stream that has run dry” (Job 6.15).
Looney Tunes taught me so much as a kid. That you could get anything through the mail. That creations could be aware that they existed only on the page. And, of course, that if you were out in the desert you were sure to be fooled by a mirage.
The image Job is using is something like a mirage. What he describes is a flash-flooded stream that appears in the heavy rain and then disappears when everything dries out. Something that appears to be there but, in reality, isn’t. It’s an illusion, a false echo, something that exists only in the imagination and not reality.
This is how he describes the kind of friends he’s got. They only appear to exist.
In case you hadn’t noticed, this book isn’t an illustration of restraint. Everyone, and I mean everyone says exactly what’s on their mind. Nobody holds back or is even pretending to be polite. It’s like the worst Thanksgiving meal you ever sat through, times ten.
And reading this poem as we are this summer, we don’t know who’s right or wrong, good or bad, Republican or Democrat. It’s up in the air who is really being rude here. Sure, Job might have a point and might not be at all at fault, but he’s not making it easy on anyone. There’s no call to get nasty.
Perhaps it’s just me, but the more I read the more I hear echoes of the conversations that have been had in this country over the past two or even ten years. It might start off well with someone making what seems to them a valid point but it quickly devolves into a nitpicking argument of one-upmanship where everyone’s trying to get out the best one-liner, the most stinging Tweet, or the most outrageous podcast.
And somewhere, lost and half-forgotten is, someone who is hurting and angry and tired who just needs a friend.
Memory tells me that nearly every character from Bugs Bunny to Elmer Fudd found themselves crawling parched and mumbling through the dry desert only to be fooled by a sun-and-heat created oasis that left them filling their mouths with sand. Even if they’d already been deceived once, they’d go running at the next one to, again, be disappointed. Their need was just too great to give up hope.
The poem within the Book of Job has no satisfying ending. It doesn’t reveal who was right and who was wrong. There’s never a revelation about Job’s sinfulness or sinlessness. No, at its close, we’re left with Job coming to some new understanding about himself and his world. And, probably, feeling far more alone than when it all began.
Makes you wonder if it isn’t about being right or justified, but about being with someone in the moment when their world falls apart. Bringing them food when they’re hungry, a shoulder when they’re sad. Or just a cup of cold water in the wasteland.
And not just another mirage that leaves them thirsty.
Jesus, I have been a mirage more often than I’ve been an oasis. I’ve been too concerned with arguments and debates than providing rest and relief. Help me, when the next thirsty traveler comes, to offer water in place of words.