May the mumbling
commence!
What is the
measure of a man (or woman for that matter)?
As we begin a trip into the world of Job, we read that he was the
greatest man among all the people of the East.
What made Job great? Read the
first three verses of chapter one of Job:
In the land of Uz there lived a
man whose name was Job. This man was blameless and upright; he feared God and shunned evil. He had seven sons and three daughters, and he owned seven
thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen and five
hundred donkeys, and had a large number of servants. He was the greatest man among all the people
of the East.
OK. What is your first reaction to the question
what makes Job great..? Was it the
servants and donkeys and oxen and camels and sheep? Was it the servants? These things are closer to the statement in
question, aren’t they? If we would
translate them into today’s wealth, it might go a little something like
this:
Job loved God and
avoided evil at all costs. He was
faithful to the sweetheart of his dreams.
And he sought to care for the environment and worship God by the way he
lived. Job was a successful family
business man, who had a loving family.
Job employed a large number of people in his factory and warehouse. His family had the best clothes that money
can buy. Job collected cars like some
people collect cards. And he had a house
with all the bells and whistles. Job was
the greatest man in the United States.
Yes, most of us
have the initial reaction: Yes, I want that kind of success in my life. I want all the latest gadgets that money can
buy. I want to be free to buy my family
all that they would desire. I want
people to look at me with envy. That is what
be greatest is all about.
Not so fast! What does God emphasize to Satan about Job? Job is
blameless and upright, a man who fears God and shuns evil. These qualities
are what make Job great. Job loses his
family – his children to death and his wife to bitterness. Job loses all those things that most people
would recognize as signs of wealth. They
are all gone, yet Job is still the greatest man in the East. Things do not make people great. A person’s attitude toward God and walk with
God is what makes a person great.
When a successful
Christian loses all she has, people are silenced. But God continues to call her his beloved
daughter, because God has a different idea about success, greatness, and
wealth. It is much better to be rich in
faith and walk with God than it is to spend oodles of money on fancy gadgets –
gadgets that will only be obsolete as soon as you leave the store. We cannot take our cool toys with us when we
die.
Again, greatness
in God’s sight is about our attitude and walk and talk. When we walk the narrow path that God would
have us trod, we become great – great only in that we walk humbly with a great
and powerful and living God. Success and
greatness and wealth do not come from created things; they come from the
Creator alone. That is why Job could
tell his contemporaries, “The
Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of the Lord be praised
(1:20c).” Job still had God
in his life – no matter how dark it would get and no matter if he felt the
presence or not.
So, let’s make a
goal to never be alone. Let us walk with
God. If we can walk with God, nothing
else will truly matter. There is no success
or greatness or wealth without God. And
our walk with God will always be better when we walk with fellow Christian
brothers and sisters. I give thanks this
day for the Christian brothers and sisters who walk with God alongside me.
Enough mumbling
for now…
Peace Out
No comments:
Post a Comment