Job 17:12
That would say “Night is Day”,
“The Light is near.” – in the face of darkness.
I know this is out of order, but on the day we remember terror, we reflect on yesterday’s horror.
As I seek to make my chosen routine habitual, I am once again failing on the exercise front. The book I am reading talks about ‘hacks’ like make it two minutes or don’t miss two days in a row. I am not sure what my problem is, but I need to get over it. My long-term health depends on it.
‘That would say’ was also ‘they make’, ‘these men turn’, ‘they change’, ‘You’, and ‘that could turn’. The subject here is his hopes and not another person.
‘Near’ was also ‘short’ and ‘here’. One verse mirrored stitch one with jumbling the words to become ‘And darkness into blessed light’. This assumes the verb is turns for both stitches and ignores the speaking verb and the fact that our hopes do not change facts. I could be wrong, but neither option is off topic.
Yesterday included what was called an assassination of a young Christian leader. The video I saw was horrific. Being a martyr is not something we think about a lot in our culture, but this man certainly experienced it. I am reading in Acts 15 this morning and the young church was very afraid of its leaders being assassinated any day. Paul and Stephen were both stoned the last few chapters I read before, although Paul was either not dead or resurrected.
My first reaction to the video was to fight. My second was to question who to fight and how. This morning with some perspective, I think the way to fight is to continue to glorify God and love my neighbor, sharing Christ along the way, knowing that I will suffer for it in some manner and may even be killed. But my reward is salvation, and I already know I have it. I pray that this action leads to more living out of Christ’s values than to more ‘conventional’ fighting that has plagued Christian history.
In this verse Job is lamenting the loss of his hope that allowed him to push on even when things were bad. His hopes did not change the bad, but they allowed him to proceed anyway. We know people in the world will make life bad as they seek happiness on their own terms. We know we will suffer for sharing the goal of seeking joy through serving others and Christ. Christ exemplified the living for others that we are to follow. Let’s do it, especially since we always have our hope.
Written 9/11/25, Posted 9/11/25, Job 396/~1070