Job 14:11

As water vanishes from a lake,

   And a river is parched and dried up,

I have a new idea to create a new ‘public’ post for these, but it will require a more impactful verse than this one. Over the last few weeks, I have been considering my baseball card collection and the lack of impact that many cards have for me now. It got worse the other day when one of the cards I sold filled in the rainbow for someone who has a 1/1 that I really hoped to get. Those hopes are crushed, but they were not very spiritual in the first place, so no big loss.

‘Vanishes’ was also ‘fail’, disappears’, and ‘runs out’. ‘Lake’ was also ‘the sea’, but that is so far beyond the expectation, that it seems unuseful.

‘Parched’ was also ‘wastes away’ and ‘decay’. ‘River’ was also ‘riverbed’ and ‘flood’. A reverse order of parched and dried up held some appeal.

In the end, my baseball card collecting goals change constantly as I want to keep my money and add to my previous uncompleted runs as much as possible, no matter how conflicting they are. I do have a number of side collections that I built up over the years thinking I would trade them for the ones I am missing. I learned long ago that buying something to trade it was a waste as no one seems to ever value the cards I have to trade as much as they do the ones I want. The obvious (to my mentor) solution is to buy the cards I want outside my budget and ignore all the less expensive ones anyway.

I could never be proud of having bought an $8,000 card for $8,000. I have cards worth a bit, but I am only proud of those that were acquired for no more than my $200 nominal limit. As a Christian trying to be a good steward, I never want to spend more on something than I think I could sell it for. My other new reality is how hard it is to sell something for what it is worth in a hurry or when  you have 100,000 other things for it to get lost among.

So in the world of Job, a lake vanishing up or a river bed drying up are annual if not more frequent occurrences (kind of like from where I grew up). These examples are meaningful to the audience and make the lesson he is teaching seem simple to understand and learn from. One of my good friends in card collecting is a minister who has a predominantly hospital related ministry. I actually only seem to have kept card collecting friends who are also Christians and can understand the restraint I try to have fun inside of. Anyway, As much as I struggle with failures in watching the Astros and collecting their cards, I know God has allowed me to enjoy success and for the Astros to do so as well. Without His support, I would be as bad off as Job. And that is the lesson, simply.

Written 9/3/24, Posted 10/17/24, Job 328