Insightful Musings on the Scripturesby
Ray Sparre, NU class of '67
Ray has a wealth of experience as a Husband, Father, Pastor, Missionary, and student of the Word. He believes and practices his faith where the rubber meets the road. You'll find his writings to be practical, insightful, and grounded in a truly Christ-centered world view.
Below are links to a printable daily Bible reading guide which Ray has followed, and an archive of all his daily devotional writings for 2010 and 2011.
| Sparre Home Page | Daily Reading Guide | 2011 Devotion Archives | 2010 Devotion Archives |
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25 Oct 11
Good evening, dear people.
It was another beautiful fall day. The crane truck worked fine. The mill worked fine. Kash worked fine. The grandkids did OK. And my wife still loves me.
I’ve tried to do simple little compositions from Job…but I keep getting carried away. I keep wanting to go down more trails than I have time for. Hope I don’t give you overload.
Good night. Pleasant dreams. That reminds me—that was a trail I wanted to run off on because Eliphaz made mention of some crazy dream he had that was not pleasant, yet he was trying to extract some kind of meaning from it. Hey—don’t trust your dreams.
Love, Dad/Ray
25 October 2011
Job 4
Focus: “Should not your piety be your confidence and your blameless ways your hope?” Job 4:6.
The first of Job’s so-called friends speaks up—Eliphaz the Termite. Oops! I said his name wrong—it’s Eliphaz the Temanite. But I don’t think I’m far off by calling him a termite—as he attempts to infest Job with his own presuppositions and begins to gnaw away at the very foundations and framework of Job’s life and faith. When he makes the statement quoted above, I think he’s essentially saying, “Hey, Job, if you’re so innocent and righteous, why all this discouragement and depression? Your circumstances plus your depression just don’t add up to innocence.”
The motive for these three guys showing up, according to the end of chapter 2, was (1) they were friends, (2) the three made an agreement with each other to go as a team rather than individually, and (3) they wanted to sympathize with him and comfort him (2:11-13). Perhaps they thought this was some temporary ailment that had afflicted Job, and that all they had to do was hang out with him awhile, he would recover, and they could go back home. But after observing his shear agony for over a week—watching him scrape off his scabs with a piece of broken pottery, wincing with pain, then behold him descend into a slough of despond—it seems that these guys become more and more convinced that all this ugly effect could only be the result of some hidden cause—something very bad that Job was concealing. Perhaps he’s been smoking pot behind the barn—or maybe he’s hooked on internet pornography. I sense that Eliphaz is rather irritated—wondering when Job is going to “come clean” by confessing to them his terrible secret sin. “Come on dude—let the truth be known and it will make things a lot easier for all of us!”
Job knows something his “friends” don’t know—that he has no such secret sin. And that causes me to do some wondering too. We all understand that experience is a very effective teacher—a modifier of perspective. And now that Job has faced this set of horrific experiences, all the while convinced that he is innocent of secret sins and wrongdoing (at least intentional wrongdoing), I wonder if that fact created a revolution within Job too as it bashed his own preconceived prosperity ideas—a view of life and suffering that was likely very similar to that of his “friends.” Here’s my main wonder: What if Eliphaz had experienced all this suffering that was upon Job? Is it not likely that Job would have been one of the “comforters” to go and visit Eliphaz with the same set of biased views being dropped on him by Eliphaz and the others?—if it were not for his own horrible experience?
We can all tell stories about difficult experiences we’ve had with other people—including me. At this point I’m particularly concerned with those stories that underscore the importance of personal integrity. I’m thinking of situations where I have been unjustly maligned, misrepresented, misquoted, misunderstood, and rejected. I’m grateful it doesn’t happen often, but just the other day I endured the misfortune of being cussed out by a guy whose brain functions in a way I can’t comprehend. (I think he has a screw loose.) It took me totally by surprise. But in times like those, my greatest mind-stabilizing ally is not a friend, not my wife, and not even God (as He obviously has chosen to not to give me some immediate dramatic affirmation or anointing) or His Word (What good is Bible knowledge if I know I am willfully violating it?)—but my own personal integrity (transparency, honesty) before God. No—this is not to say that I am trusting me for my salvation—rather it is an internal confidence that I am doing my utmost to trust Christ. Does that make sense?
“Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 3:12-14).
Amen, Brother Paul.
“Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.” - Mark Twain