Job 14:8

Though its roots grow older in the earth,

   Its stump dies in the soil.

I read this and I was stumped. I was so positive about what the previous verse said, rereading this one gave me pause. Then I figured I had missed on a word. Good thing I am not getting graded based on my first answers.

‘Grow’ was also ‘wax’ or ‘are’. ‘Wax’ might have changed the meaning a little. ‘Earth’ was also ‘ground’.

‘Stump’ was also ‘stock’; ‘stock’ also maybe changing the meaning a little. ‘Soil’ was also ‘dust’ and ’ground’.

Today was the first in a number of long days this week. The next two will be as tedious as time and my patience can handle as I have over 2000 photos from which to create two photo logs for an engineering report. My reports normally have less than 100 photos. How my guy can keep over 2000 photos straight is much different since he was there and I was not.

The word I missed on appears to be ‘a’ in ‘a’ tree. Not all trees are the same, but many trees can have multiple stumps grow from its roots. I was thinking ‘any’ tree. Back to my days of ‘Introduction to Logic’, I took a not fact and used it as if it were. Makes me wonder how many people really use logic in what they do. All the rules and all the traps involved, and I think politicians must have mastered the use of false logic on the unsuspecting public. Like the text I got demanding I needed to add my opinion to develop a party’s platform. As if they would use anything I suggested.

In the most recent book I am reading, a 90 plus year old person had a funeral that no one attended. I missed my wife’s aunt’s service recently. She was 94. I had somewhere important to be. Other’s almost missed it just thinking ‘Why bother?’. Historically family’s had widely varying ways of treating the elderly. One alternative I heard of was leaving them on the side of the trail to die. Another was worshiping them long after their death. God tells us to honor our mother and father. I am sure books have been written about all the possibilities in that command, but the saddest alternative I have learned of is sending people off to a home and never visiting. I do not want that for me. I do not want that for my wife’s parents. No idea where to go with this, but it’s not like I haven’t been stumped before.

Written 8/19/24, Posted 9/11/24, Job 322