Job 13:24

Why do You hide Your face,

   Treat me as Your enemy?

 

My fellow people struggle with pride and its focus on self. “I am the most important person in the world to me.” is often our motto. As I age, I become more aware of my shortcomings even as I seem to fall further and further short as I age. My lofty goal of “Be all you can be.”, beyond being a marketing slogan for a target audience that I was not in, has set me up for repeated failure. And since the culture defined failure as negative, I have been chasing negative far too long.

The first stitch has no real variance.

‘Treat’ was also ‘count’, ‘consider’, regard’, and ‘holdest’. I picked the most active action verb.

One of my recent thoughts is ‘Why do humans use so little of their brain’s potential?‘ I asked my accountability group whether they thought we could use more of our brain if we focused on learning more about God and how to serve others. Since we are all struggling to figure out our best way to do this while struggling with pride, I did not get a real solid path forward. My brain is trying to work the following phrase into my life know: ‘If I had only known!’

I was watching the home run derby the other night and one of the players has really large biceps. My first reaction was negative because he is a Ranger, and they were gifted a playoff victory from the Astros last year, and I do not like him or them to start. My second reaction was ‘How can he possibly be a good hitter with arms that large?’ I moved on to wonder how the life focused on God and others is really benefited by using the amount of time needed to be undertaken to grow really large muscles? I know I am not currently doing enough, but anyone with biceps at large as this guy is missing the point.

I do not think Job really understands how different his experience is from how God will truly punish His enemies. I do know that Job is missing the benefits of the hedge God had put around his life before. God promises us good things for being good, but He also promises us opportunities that will make us better and these may not always feel so good. We cannot run a 5 minute mile if we never exercise or eat right or actually put up with some pain (and a lot of effort).

We will all experience the tug of pride and the desire for no pain or suffering. However, we will all also experience the need to have a relationship with God, even if we do not recognize it, and it will bring pain and suffering to some degree. My knee hurts all the time. I know it is a result of all the running and jumping I did while not really taking the best care of my body. But it also allows me to have sympathy for people that are also experiencing ‘discomfort’ due to the things in their past. The pain helps me serve. I need to treat my knee as well as I can, but I cannot blame God for the pain, I can thank Him for the reminded, and since I am so prideful, the constant reminder.

Written 7/17/24, Posted 8/18/24, Job 307