Thoughts from my personal time with God.
[Job 1c2]
We are all born weak and helpless.
All lead the same short, troubled life.
We grow and wither as quickly as flowers;
we disappear like shadows.
So my life is, Father. Please accomplish all of your wonderful purposes (Isaiah 40:6-8).
Nothing clean can ever come
from anything… unclean…
Indeed (James 3:11-12).
[Elifaz 2]
…If you had your way, no one would fear God;
no one would pray to him.
[Sofar 1; Job 1c1]
You claim that what you say is true;
you claim you are pure in the sight of God.
What Job said was in, in fact, true (Job 1:8).
How I wish God would answer you!
How people love to proclaim this loud and clear but the reality quite often proves to be quite different (Job 42:7).…
[Job 1b]
God is so wise and powerful;
no one can stand up against him.
Sometimes it’s a lesson that has to be learned (Genesis 3:1-7; Revelation 20:10). 😁
God hung the stars in the sky—the Dipper,
Orion, the Pleiades, and the stars of the south.
I believe it’s here where a scribe translated “Pleiades” into the Greek reference for this constellation – no doubt so that his audience could better understand.…
[Bildad 1]
God never twists justice;
he never fails to do what is right.
Your children must have sinned against God,
and so he punished them as they deserved.
Bildad is going after Job’s children (Job 1:18-19) – just what a bereaved parent wants to hear… We always search for the why when bad things happen but the cause is often out of our reach (John 9:1-3).…
[Job 1a]
Why won’t God give me what I ask?
Why won’t he answer my prayer?
If only he would go ahead and kill me!
If I knew he would, I would leap for joy,
no matter how great my pain.
I know that God is holy;
I have never opposed what he commands.
To not oppose what you command, Lord – may that likewise be my request above all others.…
[ELIFAZ 1]
You have taught many people
and given strength to feeble hands.
When someone stumbled, weak and tired,
your words encouraged him to stand.
I want to be that person, Father. Am I?
…Once a message came quietly,
so quietly I could hardly hear it.
Like a nightmare it disturbed my sleep.
I trembled and shuddered;
my whole body shook with fear.
Finally Job broke the silence and cursed the day on which he had been born.
We can only stay silent for so long. Between the shock of Job 1:13 – 2:10 and the visit of his three friends (Job 2:11-13), there is actually quite a bit of time that transpires (Job 30). That is the surprising time where grief bites the hardest, where one day is like the next in an endless repetition of futility (Deuteronomy 28:67).…
…Satan left the Lord’s presence and made sores break out all over Job’s body. Job went and sat by the garbage dump and took a piece of broken pottery to scrape his sores.
What a scene. Ouch. Lamentations 3:28-29. That’s the last we see of Satan in the book. It amazes me how God completely marginalizes this creature in the Scriptures / human history even though in many ways he is the protagonist in The Game.…
…Job got up and tore his clothes in grief. He shaved his head and threw himself face downward on the ground. He said, “I was born with nothing, and I will die with nothing. The Lord gave, and now he has taken away. May his name be praised!”
Marvelous. And as much as we like to put our head in the sand and pretend otherwise, the reality is that we come into this world with nothing and we leave with nothing.…
Satan replied, “Would Job worship you if he got nothing out of it? You have always protected him and his family and everything he owns. You bless everything he does, and you have given him enough cattle to fill the whole country…”
You have likewise protected and provided for me all these many years, Father (Psalm 23:1). Thank you.…