Job 11:17
Your life on earth will be brighter than noon day,
Its darkness will shine like the morning.
Yesterday was what seemed like my worst Thursday morning ever. I eventually figured out it was only Wednesday and things got a lot better. I have often gotten my days mixed up, but never to that level. I had more work then I could do in two days, but three is enough.
‘Life’ was ‘age’, ‘earthbound days’, and ‘world’. I took the liberty to combine the two. ‘Brighter’ was also ‘clearer’, ‘rise as high’, and ‘rise higher’.
‘Its’ and ‘darkness’ were left off a couple times. Deleting ‘its’ made the subject ‘darkness’ and not ‘your life’. Others options without darkness left ‘you’ shining or ‘soaring’. One had ‘turn to’ in place of ‘shine like’.
Not for the first time, but I was surprised by how small changes could so impact the meaning. (The verse I did this morning just the opposite in that many changes in words left the meaning the same.) I was thinking that the bulk of the Bible was passed on orally before it was written down. Not only were the people more used to remembering things exactly, the fact that this was scripture probably helped them retain the words a little better. Also, God probably had a hand in keeping it close to what the authors heard from Him in the first place. There was a movie about a blind man who had memorized the entire Bible in the King James version. I am not sure my brain works that way, but that could come in handy.
I have been having computer opportunities for months now, and I recently decided not to buy a new monitor. And of course, I am now having monitor problems. Or at least my cobbled together system of cables, monitors, and docking station is exhibiting lack of consistently working. I am not confident I will be able to get this fixed and may end up getting new monitors. (I did.) Either that or I need to push my part time client’s machine off its desk. That sounds cheaper anyway. (Its too big for how I use it.)
If my life on earth is to be brighter than it is right now, then I probably need to do a little bit better job of actually using my knowledge of the Bible to live my life. Slowing down and having right sized plans for chunks of time would probably be a big help. I do find that turning on the lights in the morning helps me get up and make use of that part of the day a little better. Maybe this verse is simply telling me to turn the lights on and stay active. How novel.
(Written 3/9, Posted 3/13, Job 248)