If He should set His heart on it, if He should gather to Himself His Spirit and His breath, all flesh would perish together, and man would return to dust. Job 34: 14, 15.
Gracious God, we look to You ingratitude for life, and health, and strength, help us appreciate anew Your blessings; for Christ’s sake. Amen.
Our Scripture for today are words spoken by Elihu, one of Job’s friends, who came to visit him when calamity befell him. I have often said, that if Job’s friends had only spent the first seven days with him and then returned to their homes; their visit would have been recorded in history, as the perfect visit of its kind. (Job 2: 12, 13). When they saw him they wept; and then for seven days and seven nights they just sat with him in silence! Most of the times, if we would just be, instead of do, we would be such a blessing to the one we are just being there for!
Elihu, in his zeal to defend God, must prove to Job, that something that Job did, has brought this calamity upon himself. He is not satisfied to believe that life just happens! It has to be something someone did, or did not do, that is causing whatever is happening to us, or to them! For some of us, who seem to know the answer for all of life’s problems, it behooves us to just keep on living, until life deals us a less than perfect hand of cards! Then, only too often, we begin to see things quite differently!
But even when our doing (in this case, speaking), is less than perfect; because God will not leave us alone in our folly, some good can come out of our doing (speaking). Perhaps, without even knowing it; he makes a rather insightful pronouncement: If God should take back His Spirit and His breath, we would all be dead! How often does the average person think about this, and count his or her blessings; that we are still breathing; that we are still upon the land of the living?