January 14th

...everything, everyday should always work to my advantage. I guess it's a human inclination to praise God for His many blessings but then blame Him when things are not making sense. I recently experienced this with my mother's illness. A few weeks before she passed on she asked me, "why would God allow me to get sick in this way?" I asked her if God had made the decision to lay in bed all day (caused atrophy), or did He decide to be such a picky eater that nutrients got down to a protein drink, or the refusal to drink water on a daily basis, etc. etc. etc. All these actions and others were decided by her and lead to her unhealthy situation and then she asks about God's role. While there are many times that God allows us to go through turbulent times it is important that we recognize those things that we create, not God. We also need to accept the fact that we grow through these trials that God allows. That even in trying times God continues to help us grow, although it may seem impossible to accept at that time. Imagine those families in Conneticut whose innocent children were shot down while at school. Where is God in all of this? We need to remember that "life is not about us". We exist for Him, not the other way around. While things don't make sense to us, they do make sense to Him. God is always in control. In our Christian walk this seems to be the most challenging concept to accept.

We are all loved by the Lord and we all need Him—in good times and bad.

Funny how this can be so one-sided. When things are going well, we like to take credit ourselves. When things are bad, it's easy to question God. Carlos brought up the recent school shootings. I can't imagine how an event like this would effect ones relationship with God. I hate to think how I'd deal with it.

What Job is saying is when we have no troubles we should not look highly of ourselves because god loves us all equally he loves us all very much.Even though we have troubles god sill loves us all.I think Job was a faithful servant to god.

Good point Haley.

Tonight we read our Bible Story about Job in addition to the Daily Bread and here is what Eric says:


Never listen to Satan!




LISTEN TO GOD

Here are two things I thought of while reading this passage:

1. While living in Newport I have learned not to try and understand others lives. Many of the people we live by have such different life situations than we do that at first it was easy to pass judgement about their lifestyle or struggles. But my job is to love them even when I don't understand them.

2. A Song: (Denise you didn't know I was so musical did you? hehe)

It Is Well
When peace like a river, attendeth my way
When sorrows like sea billows roll
Whatever my lot, Thou has taught me to say
It is well, it is well with my soul
It is well ...
Though Satan should buffet, though trials should come
Let this blest assurance control
That Christ has regarded my helpless estate
And hath shed His own blood for my soul....

When I did my residency in Beverly Hills, I worked for a Jew. He was a modern/progressive Jew, so I doubt he saw things exactly like the Old Testament, but there is an overwhelming concept in Jewish culture that prosperity=blessing. If you were prosperous, you had been a good-little-Jew and found favor with God. If you were not, you messed it up somehow, and you just needed to try a little harder and your prosperity was right around the corner. Jews would say, even Job was rewarded with prosperity in the end. Sadly, I think a lot of this exists in Christianity too. I know I'm guilty of it. I praise God in good seasons, but I question what I may have done in bad seasons to deserve Him withholding prosperity.

Jesus turned this Jewish way of thinking on its head in the sermon on the mount and when talking to the rich young man. "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.” When the disciples heard this, they were greatly astonished, saying, “Who then can be saved?” If the rich don't have what it takes, then who does?

It is so hard not to think like this. Sometimes, I even have the opposite fear. I know that my prosperity is in the top 5% in the history of man - have I been given my reward? I'd like to say I'd rather have an eternal reward, but I'm afraid of what life would be like without this prosperity.

But isn't prosperity a very subjective thing? I have many families in Arvin who view themselves as "well-off" yet we recognize that they are barely above what the Labor Department identifies as the poverty level. They are very happy people because compared to their family's past situation in Mexico they are now "rich". I guess it's all relative.

6 months ago I thought we were pretty "well off."

maybe, the have-nots in the Bible seemed to know who they were, and Jesus directed his words to them the most