Job 18:1-2

Then Bildad the Shuhite replied saying:

How long before you put an end to your speeches?

   Consider us, and then we may speak.

 

‘Whiney baby’ is the phrase running through my mind. I feel like one sometimes. Bildad always seemed to be. In a meeting with a client’s client’s client yesterday, I admitted to making a mistake, and then bowled them over with numbers to show that we had proven it was ok anyway. I was super frustrated that we made the error, but happy that our solution still worked.

‘Put an end to‘ was also ‘hunt for’. Different meaning, but same result. Some had ‘you’ as ‘you both’. Makes a mess of who was he talking to if he was only speaking to two people rather than the assumed one, or all three including the other two and Job.

‘Consider’ was also ‘be sensible’, ‘gain understanding’, ‘mark’, ‘think’, and ’acquire understanding’. I liked acquire understanding, but more for its meanness than anything specific.

In the past seven days, I have agreed to one new specific business venture and to two others that have potential. I doubt all three will come to pass at the same time, but there is a chance that I end up with more work than I want. The good thing is that each will be lucrative or I’ll have to back out. In my mind we are now working so that we have money when we are too old to spend it on anything except staying healthy.

 Bildad trying to mock Job so that he can blow hot air himself is funny to me. Mainly because I have judged he and his two companions to have built up their positions not on the blessings of following God, but on the backs of those they have downtrodden. Sometimes really good people become leaders, but most of the time, people who become leaders are just trying to build themselves up.

Searching for a way to wrap this up, I happened to see the copy of The Arabian Nights sitting on my bookshelf waiting to be finished. Of course that is ironic as the whole point of The Arabian Nights is that no story is ever complete before the next one begins. Our lives are not Lifetime movies with happy endings nor are they comic movies with heroes saving the day. Our lives are a constant struggle to take care of ourselves and those we are responsible for while we are trying to make spiritual progress to satisfy that hunger to relate to something bigger. We know that the something bigger is a relationship with God through Christ, but many people do not, and they fall short. We fall short in many ways, but we ask each day for God’s support and direction. We can’t all have one of everything, but each of us can have this one thing.

Written 9/18/25, Posted 10/10/25, Job 412/~1070