Day 143, or May the 23rd. Let me tell you the facts again. Our thoughts today are rooted
in Job chapter 21 verse 2. Listen carefully to my words. Let this be the consolation you
give me.
First the big picture surrounding this verse. Job's friend Zophar gets rather frustrated
with Job, as he doesn't seem to have heard what he told him earlier, so he repeats it.
He repeats that the wicked do not thrive, and stresses this truth by telling Job that
everyone knows that, and it's a fact that is rooted in history and believed by everyone
who knows anything. He seems to ignore the fact that some wicked men do seem to thrive
in order to make his point. After all, why let a fact or two get in the way of a great
theory that you have believed all your life? With a note of desperation, Job responds by
asking Zophar to listen carefully, and he will explain again why he doesn't believe
what Zophar has told him for the second time. He sounds a little like a primary school teacher,
who has a pupil in front of them who will not change their mind even though a perfectly
reasonable explanation has been given to encourage them to do so.
And now our action step for today. Of course, simply repeating something doesn't make
it true, but it does make it memorable. That's why it's very helpful, indeed essential,
to regularly re-read and ponder the truths of the Bible. If we are not careful, things
can get jumbled in our Western minds that are so used to writing things down rather
than relying on our memory. I can recall too many times checking a detail in a Bible story
or parable only to find that the text doesn't actually say what I thought. In the days of
oral tradition, memories were very reliable because that's all they had to pass on an
account from generation to generation. Today we need to read and re-read. We need to marinate
our minds with the Scriptures, and then we know we have the truth. And as the Bible says,
the truth will set us free.