90 Days: Job's Uncensored Heart
Wow - can I just say that I'm loving Job. The raw humanity, the reverence for God yet the desire to have a relationship with Him.... this might be my favorite book so far. A few quotes that stood out to me in tonight's reading:
19 Will You ever look away from me,
or leave me alone until I swallow my saliva?
20 [If] I have sinned, what have I done to You,
Watcher of mankind?
Why have You made me Your target,
so that I have become a burden to You?
21 Why not forgive my sin
and pardon my transgression?
For soon I will lie down in the grave.
You will eagerly seek me, but I will be gone.
Job 7:19-21 (HCSB)
You will eagerly seek me, but I will be gone. So God, instead, just love on me? Please stop being so powerful and distant and terrifying... and just love on me.
Job... I love your uncensored emotion and heart.
Oh, come on! That's beautiful. Amazing. Job is so passionately trying to get his head around the idea of God. Job is trying to figure out this whole sin and forgiveness thing. He's begging God to just give a little grace...
32 For He is not a man like me, that I can answer Him,
that we can take each other to court.
33 There is no one to judge between us,
to lay his hand on both of us.
34 Let Him take His rod away from me
so His terror will no longer frighten me.
35 Then I would speak and not fear Him.
But that is not the case; I am on my own.
Job 9:32-35 (HCSB)
If that's not a man begging for the Messiah, I don't know what is. I can't imagine living in a time when one didn't know how God was going to redeem His people. I can't imagine being lost, trying to figure out why the world is set up this way, with failable humans, an infailable God, and sin and punishment and forgiveness and grace being all scattered about. That might be one of my new favorite sets of verses.
One more from tonight:
Only grant [these] two things to me, [God] ,
so that I will not have to hide from Your presence:
21 remove Your hand from me,
and do not let Your terror frighten me.
22 Then call, and I will answer,
or I will speak, and You can respond to me.
23 How many iniquities and sins have I committed?
Reveal to me my transgression and sin.
24 Why do You hide Your face
and consider me Your enemy?
Job 13:20-24 (HCSB)