Job 11:7

Can you discover the essence of God,

   Can you discover the nature of the Almighty?

 

I had a bit of a harder time going to sleep last night than usual, at least lately. Could have been the artificial sweetener in my sugar free drink, or the chocolate in my protein bar, or the tension in the show we were watching, or trying to trade an Altuve card for a Correa card. Just how much influence should the market have over what I pay for something?

“Essence” was “deep things”, “mysteries”, “depths”, or a swap to “what God has probed”. “Discover” was “find out”, “fathom”, “search out”, “find by searching”, and “penetrate”. I did not dismiss the possibility of the concept of “fathom the things that God has probed” easily, but I felt the ask was the same as in the second stitch of learning about God more so than learning the things God thinks about.

“Nature” was “limits”, “unto perfection”, and “last end”. I may not have understood the concept that this could have meant finding out how far God will allow Job to go. I knew it was not asking if you could get a perfect understanding of God. I have a sense that the discussion of my favorite source pushed me towards “the nature of God” that seems now so vital to the passage.

A friend heard me mention a desire to study what Jesus actually did in depth now that I have matured a little in my faith. He ran out and bought a book that he thought might help me. I liked that.

This same friend helped me get ready to consolidate all the data on my old computers so that I could get rid of them. Nominally I had wanted to keep the hard drives and throw everything else in the trash. But I got to give him one of the working computers and give another four away to an organization helping others. As noted before somewhere, this giving really made me feel good.

In the tv show we were watching, one character seemed driven to want the best for everyone else and sacrificed of himself to help. It seemed a unique characteristic in the show, but that is the characteristic of following Christ. The difference is that we want to sacrifice of ourselves so that others may find eternal life in Christ. The $35 gap in the value of a $500 baseball card is pretty small and the value of any baseball card in reality is almost nil. I knew that I was wasting effort, but the person on the other side of the deal is in that gray range between acquaintance and friend, is a Christian, and I want to both sacrifice to show I am not a greedy loser and to share within the body of Christ, but I also want to be a good steward. (Lots of tension there.)

I do not think we can come to know God perfectly, but I do think that we are called to try to understand His essence as much as possible, to know the nature of the Almighty as well as we can. I still have the first couple Bibles I was given as a child and I know that how I understand God is driven by what I learned from reading them. But not only that, this also drove how I understand the world. I learned about the nature of God by comparing it to the actions in the world around me.

I know that God made us to want a relationship with him more than anything else. More than having a job, more than having shelter, more than having food, and more than having something to drink. Yes, we need all these things to have life, and He tells us to enjoy them; but He asks us to want Him more. I want to know the essence of God, to know the nature of the Almighty, but I need to try and discover them. I need it more than anything.

(Written 2/8/23, Posted 2/9, Job 237)