Eliphaz' Prophecy

I was reading Job today, and I came across a verse that caused me to pause.

Job 22:30 - "He will deliver one who is not innocent, and he will be delivered through the cleanness of your hands."

Context: Eliphaz accuses Job of not being so righteous as he claims (actually he accuses him of some pretty terrible stuff), and then tells him that all he needs to do is turn to God, hide His word in his heart, and God will restore him. He finishes his exhortation with this verse.

I pondered to myself what this could mean. The most obvious answer I could think of was that Job would save an unrighteous man by virtue of his own righteousness. I thought about how this could happen. And then I remembered how Job ends...

[Spoiler Alert!]
After God gives Job a thorough rundown about who is God and who is not, Job confesses that he has no case before God. God then turns to Eliphaz and tells him that He is not pleased with him and his friends because they have not spoken what is right about God as Job has. The solution? Go to righteous Job and ask him to make sacrifice on their behalf, because God will accept Job. And so they do. Whoa... do you see what just happened? God saved him who was not innocent, and He did it by the cleanness of Job's hands. Dude Eliphaz, it was you! You are the one who is not innocent! You are the one who will be saved by the cleanness of Job's hands! For thirty-some-odd chapters Eliphaz and his friends have sat and accused Job, exhorted him, insulted him, trivialized his suffering, gotten defensive, etc. And all this time, they were the unrighteous ones. And yet it was Job who was made to suffer. It's completely opposite of "the world according to Eliphaz".

It blows my mind. Does God not have a sense of irony?

Worry

I've been worrying a lot recently, especially about my job. As I was lying awake worrying tonight after putting our son back to sleep (after a blessedly short wail session), I decided to analyze my tendency to worry. I know it is not of God, and is therefore unnecessary. So why did I feel like it was necessary to worry? Because worry occasionally produces something good for me. You see, I have a problem about being forgetful, and when I worry about something that soul-crushing weight of despair generally helps to keeps me from forgetting. So I realized I was using worry as a memory mechanism. Problem is (besides the obvious problem that this is disobeying Jesus [Matthew 6:25-34]), my worry does not come in flavors. So it quickly becomes impossible to distinguish between multiple worries, and also becomes impossible to know when I can stop worrying. How do I know I'm not forgetting something off my worry list? Self-replicating cycle...

I realized what I need to do instead is think about things as I usually do, but then make action items instead of "worry notes". If a decision needs to be made, make a decision or make a plan to get the info necessary to make the decision. If an action needs to be taken, write it down or put a reminder in my phone or just execute the action. I'm hopeful that this can really work out, because it is a matter of obedience. To be faithful to Jesus, I must stop worrying. I'm hopeful that He will bless any mechanism I choose to use to do that. Anybody got any suggestions?

P.S. - This type of thing is exactly why I have this blog, so if you aren't interested in hearing the semi-coherent ramblings that are bouncing around in my brain @ 2am, you might as well unsubscribe... ;-)

Faithful

Every night, we pray that Carsen will have a love for God's word.

This morning when I got her up, she reached over to her dresser and grabbed her bible.
"Can we read bible out there?" she asked, pointing to the living room.

It was a humbling and joyful reminder of God's faithfulness. Her favorite bible story is Samson.