Job 13:14

Why, shall I bear my flesh in my teeth,

   My life breath, in my palm?

 

Yesterday a friend came over to try and help me get my computer to backup to the server every morning. I had assumed the server already had software on it to make it easy. If it was, we couldn’t find it. We found this machine had 143 tasks scheduled. We tried to add one, but I am not sure if we succeeded.

‘Flesh’ was also ‘self’ and ‘body’. ‘In my teeth’ was also ‘in jeopardy’. ‘Why, shall I bear’ was a whole bunch of phrases. I have a note that says “Idioms.” If I remembered what an idiom was, it might help.

The second stitch was basically ‘take my life in my hands’. I simply tried to keep the poetic in my version.

There was a point in my career when I was offered a job in IT. I knew a lot about computers at that stage, but I was a structural engineer who used computers and I did not want to be a computer guy. I might have passed on a great career, or at least a lucrative one, but I wanted to follow the one God had called me to. The other aspect was that the industry was in a downturn and the computer gig was guaranteed and my structural job, not so much. It kinda feels like I took the risky path as this verse seems to suggest.

In this verse, Job is saying that he knows that His appeal to God had this ‘taking your life in you own hands’ and ‘setting yourself up for a big fall’ feel to it. But he has faith that God will restore Him. No one else there understands why Job, as a sinner like the rest of us, is so confident that God knows what is happening and that Job is not being punished for his past sins.

I have tried to be efficient with my computers over the years, but as this weekend exposed, my skills are quite limited, and I will never get rich based on them. Over the years, I have struggled with the goal of being efficient with everything. To the point where I do not get much done because I am too worried about efficiency. I am slowly trying to work on doing things without the need to be efficient. Not being efficient causes me lots of stress.

Yesterday, I was not efficient at all dealing with the computers. I took my time, did not let stress get to me. I have a path forward for how to keep my poor computer skills from deleting everything I need to keep going. We can only hope I did not make a recent error due to an old mistake I made in backing up an old computer. But if I did, it will just be a task for another day to overcome. Not efficient, but effective.

Written 4/28/24, Posted  8/5/24, Job 298