Job's Priorities - September 4
Today’s Readings: AM Psalm 38; PM Psalm 119:25-48; Job 12:1,14:1-22; Acts 12:18-25; John 8:47-59
As I rejoin the rotation of reflecting on Scripture, I return to you all with a renewed hope for this practice. Consider this: you are reading a reflection on Scripture. You might click on the hyperlinks and read the Bible passages too. You might be moved by what is written, apathetic, or even disappointed. Sometimes it might bring great comfort or provide an insight that deepens your faith. But at the very least, the action of reading this reflection is a willingness to grow in your faith. And in all fairness, as one of the writers, we are growing with you.
Putting practices in your life that help you grow seems to be a critical component of living a faithful life. It comes with some risk too, because it implies that we may not always be the person that we are right now. It implies that God may be up to something active in our life.
As I read the passage from Job assigned for the day, I hear a cautious reminder of our mortality and limitations. We can’t turn the unclean clean. We can’t escape the limitations of our mortal life. Only God can. Job is pleading to let mortality be mortality and God to be God.
One of my focuses of study this summer has been trying to make sense of the changes of perception of Christianity, and how people use faith to justify their own lives, their choices, and their personal beliefs. I find it fascinating how so many people end up with radically different opinions on how their lives and faith intersect. In many ways, this has the potential to be a positive development as it could allow a diverse group of people with different civic ideas to be bound together for the greater good. It could also be problematic when people’s civic identities become larger than their faith.
A challenge of faith in a time filled with competing ideas is to understand what is of God, and what is of man. For me, it feels sometimes like we place our hope too much in other people, or our desire for certain laws, or we make idols out of issues, parties, and flags. And while I certainly don’t want people to become apathetic, or even disengaged from a faithful civic life, Job is reminding us to remember what is of God and what is of man.
How do we place the simplicity of living out our faith of following the way of Jesus in his great commandment, to love God with all of our heart, and soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves as the ultimate identity of being faithful followers of Jesus instead of the human identities we lift up as idols? How can we see our commitment to each other by recognizing the image of God that all of humanity shines as our ultimate commitment? It might take each of us reordering our priorities. It seems like Job is doing just that too.
John+
Question for Self-Reflection: How do we place the simplicity of living out our faith of following the way of Jesus in his great commandment, to love God with all of our heart, and soul, and mind, and to love our neighbor as ourselves as the ultimate identity of being faithful followers of Jesus instead of the human identities we lift up as idols?