Morning Musings: Job 29:1-4

“And Job again took up his discourse, and said: ‘Oh, that I were as in the months of old, as in the days when God watched over me, when his lamp shone upon my head, and by his light I walked through darkness, as I was in my prime, when the friendship of God was upon my tent…'”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

Job’s ordeal had been intense at this point.  He had lost everything including his health.  That’s not really specific enough.  He had faced total financial ruin.  All of his children had died in a tragic accident (an accident we, the readers, know was caused by Satan).  His wife had functionally abandoned him out of her own grief.  And he was experiencing horrendous physical suffering as well.  To make matters even worse, three of his best friends had spent days with him arguing with greater and greater intensity and insistence that he was ultimately to blame for all of his troubles because of some sin that was going unconfessed in his life.  The old adage, “when it rains it pours,” does not even begin to cover it here. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: Psalm 142:1

“With my voice I cry out to the Lord; with my voice I plead for mercy to the Lord.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

This is one of those psalms to pray when the wheels have fallen off the thing and nothing is going your way.  The context note tells us that it was a prayer of David’s when he was in the cave.  That alone gives us some hope that this is a good prayer for hopeless-seeming situations even without any of the other words. Read the rest…

Morning Musings: 2 Corinthians 1:9

“Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death.  But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”  (ESV – Read the chapter)

One of the questions that has haunted humans since sin entered into the world is why bad things happen.  How do we reconcile the presence of evil in the world with our innate sense that the world was designed to be good?  For those who have heard the Christian claims of a God who is perfectly loving and all-powerful at one and the same time this challenge becomes even more acute.   Read the rest…