Job Again

So I've read further in Job now and realize he is more human than maybe I originally thought when I wrote about him yesterday. He actually does question God because unlike we, who have the benefit of knowing the scene as told in chapter 1, Job doesn't. As far as he knew, his life was upright before God (and God agrees) so he didn't understand why his children were killed, his fortune vanished and his health deteriorated while he was stuck with a foolish wife and self-righteous friends preaching to him about his sinful life. The thought back then was if you were suffering, obviously you were sinful. If you were blessed with children, wealth and health then you were pleasing God.

Things were going so well for Job until that one bad week in his life. Seriously, I cannot see myself handling all those things with grace at all. Job's heartfelt questions for God make perfect sense to me. He is a feeling, hurting piece of clay ... not an unfeeling inanimate object!

Here are a couple verses that stuck out to me as I was reading earlier. I'm only halfway done with the book thus far. It has 42 chapters.

The first passage has to do with God's authority over nations and leaders. You can see the preceding verses for even more. From Job 12:

²³ He makes nations great, and destroys them;
he enlarges nations, and disperses them.

²⁴ He deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason;
he sends them wandering through a trackless waste.

²⁵ They grope in darkness with no light;
he makes them stagger like drunkards.

These verses were from one of Job's friends, Eliphaz, in Job 15:

¹¹ Are God's consolations not enough for you,
words spoken gently to you?

¹² Why has your heart carried you away,
and why do your eyes flash,

¹³ so that you vent your rage against God
and pour out such words from your mouth?

Maybe one day I'll make some sort of application here, but I just wanted to note these for now. Job 15:11 was like a question straight from God this morning....sweet.

Finding Strength & Joy in Him

Recently I wrote about the power of praise. I have a lot on my mind today and need some of that power. Instead of trying to figure things out with a full mind and heavy heart, I need to start praising. So here I shall try. And I'll borrow words from I Chronicles 16.

²⁷ Splendor and majesty are before him;
strength and joy in his dwelling place.

²⁸ Ascribe to the LORD, O families of nations,
ascribe to the LORD glory and strength,

²⁹ ascribe to the LORD the glory due his name.

³¹ Let the heavens rejoice, let the earth be glad;
let them say among the nations, "The LORD reigns!"

³² Let the sea resound, and all that is in it;
let the fields be jubilant, and everything in them!

³³ Then the trees of the forest will sing,
they will sing for joy before the LORD,
for he comes to judge the earth.

³⁴ Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good;
his love endures forever.

I really love this passage. It makes a wonderful mental image of a happy creation - the rejoicing heavens, jubilant fields, dancing cows (don't you see the part in verse 32 about "and everything in them"? Well, cows are often in fields, ya know.), singing trees. And then check out those stunning tulips pictured above! Even Solomon in all his splendor was not clothed like them!

I will think on the first verse, number 27. Especially this part: "strength and joy in his dwelling place." So does this mean if I dwell close to God that I will get that needed strength and the joy that will make this heavy heart and troubled mind peaceful again?

I'll give it a try. Please, Lord, help me. You know how I struggle in this area.

Chronicles name

There are a lot of really, ummm, shall we say bizarre (at least to my western ears!) names in Chronicles, but one I made note of is

HAPPIZZEZ

Sounds like a person who was happy and sleepy (zzzzz).

Happizzez was in I Chronicles 24:15 in case you were wondering.

Job and Jehoram

Oh, I forgot to share that I started the book of Job today. In the month of May, I read quite a few Old Testament books (Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, I & II Samuel, I & II Kings, Daniel, I & II Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah and Esther). Yes, I know I skipped Ruth and inserted Daniel in the "wrong" spot, but those are the ones I read last month.

Job is a pretty amazing fellow. I was reading how messengers came to him and delivered bad news over and over and over, yet Job's response was to fall on the floor in worship to the Lord. Wow. Shall we accept only goodness from the Lord and not trouble? What an attitude. I wish I had more of it. Not that I want all those things to happen to me so I can practice, but ya never know what God has in store for us each day.

I still have things to post from II Chronicles. I'm pleasantly surprised at how much I got out of this book. Here is something that stuck out to me from II Chronicles 21. What an ending to a wicked man's life.

¹⁸ After all this, the LORD afflicted Jehoram with an incurable disease of the bowels. ¹⁹ In the course of time, at the end of the second year, his bowels came out because of the disease, and he died in great pain. His people made no fire in his honor, as they had for his fathers.

²⁰ Jehoram was thirty-two years old when he became king, and he reigned in Jerusalem eight years. He passed away, to no one's regret, and was buried in the City of David, but not in the tombs of the kings.

Your ending recalled as painful and your passing away being "to no one's regret." What a way to be remembered even thousands of years from when this event occurred.

Oh, to be like Job instead of Jehoram.

Using people, sowing & reaping, empty words, debt

So, it is a really hot June day! Thankfully I went walking early this morning while it was still pleasant outdoors. I finished reading a book which I posted about as well (previous post). I had a lot I wanted to copy from it and it couldn't wait 'til the end of the month. I have heard of the Hmong people hiding in Laotian jungles. They are on the run from their government because these people helped American forces during the Vietnam war. Sadly, we promised to help them, but never did. So they are foraging for food and wandering from hiding place to hiding place .. what an existence! Reading Three Cups of Tea made me see again how my country has done something similar only this time it was in Afghanistan. We gave support to the Afghanis when they fought our Cold War enemies, the Soviets. We supported Osama Bin Laden who arguably is our top national enemy presently. Amazing how that works, isn't it? America, the land of users. Blah. I really am disgusted by that and have concluded we are only reaping what we have sown for years. No longer are we a "nation under God" or even living "in God we trust. " Those are all empty words so why keep up the pretense? We don't trust God. We trust ourselves. Ah, good ol' humanism!

I am disgusted by my nation that keeps borrowing and burying itself in debt because we don't know how to curb our appetites and lust for more, more, more. I hate that personal responsibility has gone out the door and everyone just demands more bailouts and more services. Our politicians have become addicted to power and money. They want people dependent on them, and we are playing along with their desires. Why is General Motors now primarily owned by US taxpayers? Or should I say China since, I believe, even the US taxpayers are owned by the Chinese now.

It's maddening and, yes, I am frustrated by it. Thanks for asking.

Book Review -- Fighting with books, not bombs

Three Cups of Tea by Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin -- After a failed attempt to summit the K2 mountain peak in northern Pakistan, Greg Mortenson's life was changed forever. It was incredible reading how God put this man into various positions to help others. His promise to one village turned into a passion, and my admiration for this guy increased the more I read about his desire to help others. I often have that desire, but do little to nothing. Here is a guy who ACTS. As the Bible would say, he is a doer of the Word, not just a hearer.

While initially being for the war in Afghanistan after seeing how oppressive Taliban rule was for the common people, Greg's views quickly changed when he realized innocent civilians were being killed with no apologies or compensation from the US government. While saying "I'm sorry" doesn't bring back a loved one, Greg says our labeling innocents as "collateral damage" and not acknowledging their existence is the ultimate insult in Islamic culture. (see pg. 294). Instead we should honor their dead. He said it was ironic how we could have numbers of dead Taliban, but when it came to civilians the numbers were never concrete. Instead of making friends, this was the way to make more enemies.

"I've learned that terror doesn't happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren't being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death" (pg. 292). A Taliban student admitted he didn't want to be a fighter, but he didn't have any job opportunities and the Taliban offered him $300 which he gave to his mother before joining the fight. After an injury, he was glad to leave the Taliban.

Greg told about the Gulf Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar financing madrassas in these poor regions and how they often would take some of the best students back to those countries to indoctrinate them in Wahhabi Islam, return them to their home villages where they were instructed to marry four women, "breed like rabbits" and produce generation after generation of intolerant Muslims. (These people are thinking long term!) Greg wanted his schools to counter these intolerant brainwashing schools by not teaching any fundamentalist Islam (e.g. Wahhabi).

Throughout the book, I was introduced to many wonderful Muslims and Greg pointed out time and again that the problem was not with all Muslims as the vast majority were peaceful. But after 9/11 he got hate mail for saying such things. Getting hate mail was a new experience for him.

I loved the chapter about "a village called New York" when he was in Pakistan when terrorists hit the twin towers on American soil. His village friends in Pakistan were apologetic and protected him from anyone who might try to hurt their American friend while on their soil. His Pakistani friend was sad thinking of Greg going back to the States because he would not be there to protect Greg.

Greg was in Pakistan after the Iraqi war started and was with one of his friends who was seeing scenes of war on the TV. His friend's shoulders slumped as he watched pictures of Iraqi women wailing as they carried the bodies of their children after they were crushed in bombed buildings. His friend's reply was telling.

"'People like me are America's best friends in the region," Bashir said at last, shaking his head ruefully. "I'm a moderate Muslim, an educated man. But watching this, even I could become a jihadi. How can Americans say they are making themselves safer?" Bashir asked, struggling not to direct his anger toward the large American target on the other side of his desk. "Your President Bush has done a wonderful job of uniting one billion Muslims against American for the next two hundred years."

"Osama had something to do with it, too," Mortenson said.

"Osama, baah!" Bashir roared, "Osama is not a product of Pakistan or Afghanistan. He is a creation of America. Thanks to America, Osama is in every home. As a military man, I know you can never fight and win against someone who can shoot at you once and then run off and hide while you have to remain eternally on guard. You have to attack the source of your enemy's strength. In America's case, that's not Osama or Saddam or anyone else. The enemy is ignorance. The only way to defeat it is to build relationships with these people, to draw them into the modern world with education and business. Otherwise the fight will go on forever." (pg. 310)

One of my favorite lessons of the book was when the village leader Haji Ali, a dear friend, finally sat Greg down one day after Greg was driving the people crazy trying to keep the school construction on task.

"If you want to thrive in Baltistan, you must respect our ways. . . . The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die," he said, laying his hand warmly on Mortenson's own. "Doctor Greg, you must make time to share three cups of tea. We maybe uneducated. But we are not stupid. We have lived and survived here for a long time."

"That day, Haji Ali taught me the most important lesson I've ever learned in my life," Mortenson says. "We Americans think you have to accomplish everything quickly. We're the country of thirty-minute power lunches and two-minute football drills. Our leaders thought their 'shock and awe' campaign could end the war in Iraq before it even started. Haji Ali taught me to share three cups of tea, to slow down and make building relationships as important as building projects. He taught me that I had more to learn from the people I work with than I could ever hope to teach them." (pg. 150)

I like Greg's approach to fighting the "war on terror" with books instead of bombs. It seems like a more long-lasting, real solution than what our country currently is doing. Maybe all those billions should have been spent on building schools for poor children instead of destroying countries. As they say, "Hindsight is 20/20." Ahhh.

June!

Just wanted to say "Happy June!!!" And, wow, I cannot believe it's the sixth month of the year already!

I haven't been hiding the last few days

just been hanging out with these two guys

at the beach!

And here's the clean little Bug.

We had a great time and it was very nice to get away for a few days.