Job 9:28

Then I remain in dread of all my suffering,

   Knowing You will never count me innocent.

I have found that my routine helps me complete my daily tasks. I sometimes feel numb over a few of them, but I feel better once I am done. It is not supposed to be difficult, but I do not look at my struggles in this area as something to give up on. I went to visit the kid at college and got way out of routine. I came back and with a little new work have rearranged my whole office. Maybe the new setup will help my routine.

“Remain in dread” was also “become afraid”, “still dread”, “am afraid”, “still I fear”, “I was in terror”, or “I am frightened”. When I first went through the options, I did not see the range of fear and the variance of timing. The choice for remain in dread just seemed obvious. Terror and even fear just felt too much. Beginning and being just felt too late to the game. “Suffering” was also “sorrow” and “pain”, but neither seemed more applicable to dread.

“Knowing you will” came from my poet source and carried the day over “for I know you will” that most sources used or “I realize you will” in my favorite source. “Never” was also “not”, but like uttermost in our Bible study this morning, the extreme meaning seemed more accurate. “Count me innocent” was also “acquit me” or “set me free”. Actually “hold me innocent” was from all the Christian sources, but count overwhelmed them in meaning.

If you have never done something that seems really silly to get a rise our of your friends, then you cannot understand how I felt this morning after I did so. My action was based on the fact that I forgot someone’s name that was walking by. This is the opposite of how God cherishes us in that He always remembers everything about us. We have all sinned, and God has set up the system so that we cannot ever be innocent on our own. While Job may not have understood about the coming Messiah, he definitely set up the understanding for why one was needed. Job is admitting that we suffer from our sins and if it was only up to us, that it could only ever be so. But he has this strong push to relate to God, and he argues that there must be some way for him to be saved. The knowledge we can bring to Job based on study of the New Testament is tremendous and after so many years of knowing it, we can lose perspective of what Job did not know when the author wrote this book.  

The natural state of man is to worry about the trouble that is due. The spiritual state of salvation is knowing that we are counted innocent because of what Christ has done for us. We may dread the things we have to do while still here, but we pine for that day when we are free from the presence of sin.

(Written 9/23, Posted ?, Job 200)