Today’s Reading: Job 32-37

So now the youngest of Job’s friends takes up the issue, not only with Job but with his friends because they condemn Job and yet were unable to answer Job’s defense of himself! And with Job, he is upset because Job has said “I am clean and free from guilt. Yet God has found fault with me; he considers me his enemy…etc.” But who can understand God and what He does, as Elihu says – He speaks – now this way, now another – though man may not perceive it. (!) But God does have a mediator, one out of a thousand, to tell a man what is right for him, to be gracious to him and say, ‘Spare him from going down to the pit; I have found a ransom for him.’ This for me is what is so beautiful about our God! He never stops trying to speak to us and He most certainly has found a ransom, although it is at a very costly price to Himself!

Elihu says that Job says ‘that he (Job) is innocent, but has been denied justice etc. and ends up saying that Job says, ‘It profits a man nothing when he tries to please God!’ I find in my life that I am able to drift in this direction and the thoughts enter my head, but I trust not for long, for He is indeed gracious and loving even although He makes us walk in darkness sometimes. But He does not do as Elihu says that Job says “He does not listen to men’s cries who cry out because of the arrogance of the wicked… does not take the least notice of wickedness!” I like Elihu’s description of God – “God is exalted in His power. Who is a teacher like Him!… How great is God – beyond our understanding! The number of His years is past finding out. Elihu says that you only need to look to nature to understand how great He is!

But I guess I like the prayer of repentance which Elihu talked about earlier in the reading! May it be mine each day, ‘Teach me what I cannot see; if I have done wrong, I will not do so again.’ I know that the Lord delights to teach good ways and in Psalm 139, I think David knew it also as he prayed, “Search me, O God, and know my HEART; try me and know my anxious THOUGHTS; and see if there be any hurtful WAY in me, and lead me in the everlasting WAY. Anyone who would like to pray that prayer with me? (But please God, be gentle, for I’m so fragile! Thank you, my loving Father.)