Job 22:13

Therefore, you say:

   ‘What can God know?

      Can He judge through the deep darkness?

 

The gap I often run into is that I simply do not, in and of myself, want the same things that God wants, but in my desire to have a relationship with Him, I do want to want what He wants. I made plans for dinner with friends, and they turned it into a party with 19 people. What I intended in a small gathering of my people turned into an overwhelming endeavor. As it turns out, I focused on my friends and a few other people I had met many times over the years. It wasn’t as bad as I feared, but I did avoid the new people.

The introductory string looks to have been part of the first stitch as many sources used something like it. ‘Can know’ was often ‘does know’.

‘Can’ on the second stitch was also ‘does’ and ‘how can’.

When I heard the guy say you had to work to make friends, my defenses went up, and I did not want to do that. It reminded me of the time we listed all our friends, invited them to do something, and then waited for each to reciprocate. Turns out only a handful of all our friends were initiators. We moved on from a lot of people at that point. Might not have been the best thing to do, but we felt used, and needed more. My wife has made more friends, but I have simply focused on the ones that responded.

I do have one want that I would need a friend to help me achieve: A catio. As in a contained outdoor space for my cats that they can get in and out of from the house without me. We have a tent that one cat has always liked to be in, and the second cat has warmed up to it. We are not going to let them be true outdoor cats, so this would be a small measure of freedom for them. But it something that is too much for me alone.

One of the gaps in this is that I do not value my cats that much. In the grand scheme of things, I want to spend my time on the things that grow God’s Kingdom in the way He calls me to. I just cannot see how learning to paint or learning the guitar or building the catio fits in with any of that. I’ve even daydreamed of finding a real painter who could paint what I envision. Playing the guitar would just take a miracle from God. The catio though, might just taking finding a new friend.

Written 8/12/26, Posted 9/2/26, Job 532/~1070