Job 13:3

Yet I wish to speak with the Almighty,

   I desire to reason with God.

 

One of my favorite visions is of one of our past youth pastors holding up his Bible and proclaiming that when he found something he did not agree with, he would change his opinion. I liken this to Job in this verse expressing a desire for God to teach him something. Job may not really be that humble, but he is in a world of hurt and trying to deal with pain and loss that goes beyond anything he had experienced. Its like when a youngster (or anyone really) says, “I’ve never seen anything like that in my whole life.” A big claim to ignorance.

‘Yet’ was also ‘but’, ‘surely’, and ‘indeed’. I haven’t addressed little things like this in a while, but I do recognize that my preferences were built on my experiences. ‘Wish’ was mostly ‘would’, but ‘desire’ also expressed the emotion in the statement.

‘Desire’ was also ‘want’, left out, or ‘insist’. Insist might be in alignment with what Job felt, but I liked the symmetry better. ‘Reason’ was mainly ‘argue’ or ‘dispute’, but I felt like Job did not just want to get it off his chest.

I often want to speed through things (like my amalgamation of Job), but I also want to do them right, and in some cases I actually want to follow whatever God is asking me to do in the circumstances. I realized that one thing I could do independent of both the amalgamating and the blogging was to start back on the first blog and look for verses that I wanted to change and go back and update the current version. I promptly went back to whatever I was distracting myself from and did nothing. Now I have to figure out if it was a push from God or a random thought to be ignored.

Many people desire to know the next right thing to do. It seems the status of many Christians waiting on God and non-Christians waiting on their made up deity to tell them what to do. I have had the thought twice this week that maybe the doing is not as important as the being ready to do. I have a pull to give God glory by talking to people, but I know it needs to be the right people at the right time or I am doing no good.

There is a country song with a phrase along the lines of “I saw God today.” It reminds me that God is big enough to be active in each of our lives at every moment. Adam resided in the garden with God and still managed to mess it up. So in the end, this verse is my plea also. I just now know it takes me seeking and listening to hear from Him.

 

Written 2/22/24, Posted 4/21/24, Job 285