Job 20:17
He will never look upon rivers of oil,
Streams of milk and honey,
As I learn more about food, I believe these verses are talking about things like olive oil, milk fat, and honey (as a sweetener) as opposed to vegetable oil, skim milk, and cane sugar, or high fructose whatever. I have read about no carb diets, raw food diets, and the classically bad no fat diets. The things that make them all wrong is the lack of moderation and not focusing on pleasure for yourself. Our church has been doing ‘Daniel’ fasts before pledging money, and they follow the fruit and vegetable restrictions they think come from a story about Daniel in the Bible. Daniel’s motivation was to honor God; he could have eaten anything, and God would have blessed him in the circumstances he was in and dedicating his actions to God.
‘Oil’ was only in my favorite source, the rest had no noun and referred to milk and honey. ‘Rivers’ was also streams.
‘Streams’ was also ‘brooks’, ‘rivers’, ‘torrents’, and ‘floods’ and sometimes were ‘flowing’. ‘Milk’ was also ‘cream’, ‘curds’, and my favorite ‘butter’.
I had a dream that one of my dogs ran up to me to get some attention. I miss that. Mostly they followed me around, but if I ever wanted to see them, I just had to call their name. Sometimes they would come no matter whose name I called. I think this is a behavior that we need to cultivate. Be following God around all the time waiting for Him to call upon us so we can say ‘Here I am Lord, send me.’
The last week or so, I have been struggling to get all my work done. I have been trying to balance what a meme said were my four burners of work, play, family, and health. I was fighting to get healthy, trying to get my work done, trying not to ignore the family, and as it turned out almost every day, I found a baseball card I wanted for less than I was willing to pay. I thanked God immediately every time and even more so, when I pulled a nice card from a pack. I do not expect such happiness all the time, but I do expect joy when I follow His call.
One of the things I see in collecting baseball cards is other people looking at it only in terms of money. I bought a card I wanted for less than I was willing to pay and almost immediately some guy was pestering me to sell it to him. People like that say they will make it worth my while. Then when more money won’t work they try to offer other cards that are not as valuable or not as sentimental to me. Once I bought a card for $240 (which is over my nominal limit) and the guy thought I was crazy to not take $300 for it. He was also offended when I told him no for another $240 card.
My point is that as Christians, we are supposed to see things differently than others. It’s not about the best and most flavorful foods; it is not about getting an extra dollar here or there. The goal is a relationship with God where you want to be engaged and that is enough. Anything else is gravy, even if its really good like my favorite: chicken fried steak.
Written 2/24/26, Posted 4/17/26, Job 475/~1070