Job 9:14
How then could I debate Him?
Choosing words to match with His?
(Written 7/7, Posted 7/11, Job 185)
Back to reality is the lyric that matches today. Yesterday was a regular workday, but nothing about it seemed settled. I got my work done, I grilled the steaks, but nothing else seemed normal. It is post July 4th, the halfway mark of the baseball season, and hopefully not all down hill from here.
One source had “and yet for me” that stood out as remarkedly not like any of the others that were all questioning. The King James held “how much less shall I”. In the end, I liked the question and the chose the less obviously humble phrase. “Debate” was also “answer”, “dispute”, and “raise my voice at”. Debate always seems less confrontational than argue or dispute and raising your voice at God just seems too obviously overboard.
“Find” was the lone alternative to “choose” but changed the meaning none. “Arguments” was the lone alternative to “words” but seemed too lofty a goal.
Job is asking how he can stand a chance against God if no one is able to even approach the qualities of God. The answer is of course that he cannot. Yet, Job feels 100% convinced he is being tormented due to something other than his own sin.
The little kid has picked up on watching The Arrow about the DC comic book character who started his adventures on a life raft at sea. If you have never experienced the total lack of control that comes with being in a small boat where you can only see water all the way around you, even past the edge of the horizon, then you have missed a clear example of your need for God. The Arrow miraculously survives beyond all the odds in adventure after adventure. In the real world, we would say he was protected by God. In other realities, one might just think he was supernatural. In the comics, he is just that good (or being set up by his enemies for something worse to get out of).
This last round of The Arrow had an applicable piece from an unlikely character. The character told The Arrow (and us as the audience) that the hardest thing to do in this world is to forgive yourself. God has forgiven us, we can forgive others, but sometimes we struggle with accepting the need to lay our sins at the feet of the cross and to live free. My phrase for this is that if God can forgive us, who are we to argue.