Job 22:8

For you:

   “The strong-armed control the land,

      Those so privileged dwell upon it.”

 

I am developing a new desire: I want my home to be organized and look that way. I have always wanted these two things, but not together. I am mostly organized, but I get undone when I want to be neat. I want to be neat, but I can’t seem to stay organized. I have tried for years to get all my baseball cards organized in spreadsheets, but I have never been able to keep the spreadsheets up when new ones come in. I have ended up relying on software on the internet to do so, but man do I not like having my stuff ‘out there’.

‘For you’ was once ‘For you believe’, but I felt believe was redundant. It was left off the other seven times. ‘Strong-armed’ was also ‘powerful’, ‘mighty’, and ‘the violent’. Violent seemed more correct, but less likely the intent.

‘Privileged’ was also ‘favored’, ‘honored’, and ‘powerful’.  ‘Dwell’ was used three times, ‘occupy’ once, and ‘lived’ the other times. I understood ‘privileged’ to mean ‘those who are blessed to be strong-armed’.

I read a book by one of my favorite authors the last two days, and I read several articles about the rise of data centers. One of the key similarities of characters is the perception that there are people who will bend the rules to get more. One article was about a developer who had been investigated for money laundering, prostitution, and fraud. Not the kind of person you want developing such an impactful land use right behind your back yard. The story was about a lawyer who got greedy and almost ended up in prison just because his attempt at greed was so irritating to the jury.

The ideal in this verse is that people who take the risks should get the rewards. This is a positive ideal, but in practice it comes out to whoever is willing to kill over it first gets it. That does not sound so good, so no one ever tries to frame things that way. But whoever is going to control the flow of oil halfway around the world must be prepared to kill people to make it stick. Is that who we want to be?

Most of our technology is acting up. All five laptops we use, all three work computers we use, the big tv, our phones, and the list goes on. The issues are more complicated that I can track. I almost want to hire an IT firm to come in and get us all lined out, but I fear that will cost an arm and a leg and set us up for a major hacking issue. I believe the sentiment that those who learn to use the cutting edge of computers will rule the world and the rest of us will be their servants. I guess I am just not motivated enough to take advantage of others to that degree.

Written 7/19/26, Posted 8/26/26, Job 527/~1070