Radically Happy

Category: Devotional

  • Job 36:1-37:24 God Rules, Schools

    Elihu accepts Job’s premise but denies his conclusion… stunning… we have hope… turn to God to uncover sin …accept suffering as just and forsake evil… comes down to pride… Suddenly, it makes sense… He wants to teach us, to free and ultimately prosper us…

  • Job 35:1-35:16 Words Without Knowledge

    Job’s supposed claim that righteousness [is] of no profit… an important point: virtue is good for you… God is pleased by our righteousness, and grieved by our folly… why He is putting you through the wringer… the whole point is to challenge existing mental models…talking without understanding…how confused I am…

  • Job 34:1-34:37 Good Lord, Job

    …trying to build consensus… starts ripping into Job… judging God is another matter… Is God wicked? …just, sovereign, impartial, knows what’s going on… given all this, how can you complain? … something He wants to get rid of, though you can’t see…

  • Job 32:1-33:33 Take this, Job

    …the junior Elihu… burning anger… try the patience of Job… justify his own soul rather than God… active listening… hearing what Job says… God exceeds mortals… backs up with fascinating assertions…a redemptive rather than condemning view… mere rhetorical flourish?

  • Job 25:1-31:40 Job Done Right

    …how can man hope to be justified? …I am still punished though not wicked… money, sex & power; attitudes and behaviors; commission as well as omission…God has set him an impossible riddle, written in fire on his very bones, inscribed in pain on his flesh.

  • Job 22:1-24:25 Doing Justice

    …imply that Job believed goodness could impress God… perhaps Eliphaz’s most insightful complaint… desire to see God… does not consider God “sympathetic” …Does God punish the wicked, or doesn’t he? …a sort of koan… Job can’t meet God face-to-face… Teach me humility… give me courage

  • Job 20:1-21:34 Mock On

    …asserts that Job has an unhealthy view of God… yes, he does believe that the wicked prosper… he doesn’t subscribe to this philosophy… Job the empiricist takes on his traditionalist foes …You guys are willfully ignoring the evidence, which demonstrates your ulterior motives…

  • Job 18:1-19:29 Just You Wait

    …Behold, I cry out of wrong, but I am not heard …Oh that my words were now written! …For I know my redeemer liveth, and he shall stand at the latter upon the earth… mind-blowing… for all his hangups, there is something awe-inspiring about Job… That’s a hard tension to…

  • Job 15:1-17:16 Miserable Comfort

    Eliphaz sees Job as promoting impiety… why bother being good? …why should we believe one man?… Job appears to have been borne out: his story still has the power to stun… Grant me the honesty to face the ugly facts of life, but also the hope and strength to turn…

  • Job 11:1-14:22 Cry for an Answer

    would make a great rap opera, the characters are continually talking smack… Job needs to repent, then God will heal him… Job seeks to prove his ways, rather than repent… the sheer agony… like a young child cowering in fear… not so much from his troubles as from himself

  • Job 8:1-10:22 Tainted Love

    …”If God is just, then trouble must be our own fault”… but how should man be just with God?… God really does seem a hard master …Save me from the folly of despair, and from dark-colored glasses that reveal only your justice and not your love.

  • Job 6:1-7:21 Finish the Job

    His friends say, “Ask God for mercy,” Job says, “Why bother?”… Job feels that to be destroyed would be a comfort… something going on here that is more than just whininess… Underlying his despair is a steadfast loyalty to God… he will not curse God, though he curses himself. Why?

  • Job 4:1-5:27 A Refined God

    Take Eliphaz… emphasizes God as refiner …the evil suffer, the righteous do not… I wouldn’t complain, ask God to stop it… Be happy … attitude is condescending, unsympathetic.. refining makes it easier but at a price: the loss of vital nutrients… a nice, clean, simple, logical — and wrong —…

  • Job 2:11-3:26 Unhappy birthday

    “Let the day perish wherein I was born”… clearly Job is royally depressed … anger at God was unthinkable, so it got rerouted into anger at myself… Job’s earlier good behavior was at least partly due to fear… Despite his intense suffering, Job refuses to curse God… Is that loyalty…

  • Job 1:1-2:10 A World of Hurt

    “Doth Job fear God for nought?”… Why do we fear God?… strike at the very premise of this blog — that happiness has roots, and that serving God and being happy are compatible… Serving God is not merely pursuing one’s one happiness… Otherwise, Satan’s critique would be accurate… those are…

  • Genesis 10:1-11:9 Spread and Sputter

    ..the LORD scattered Babel… God seems more worried about there being not any restraint on planned doings… “Absolute power corrupts absolutely” … glorifying in your own is often a precursor to unspeakable violence …Lead me to your new Jerusalem, where people from every tribe, tongue, and nation experience unity without…

  • Genesis 9:18-9:29 The Wrath of Grapes

    We see Noah begin as a very earthy fellow, in several senses… One of the things I’ve always loved about the Bible is that it never whitewashes its heroes… it was a pretty shameful situation in that culture … How people see us, and how we see ourselves and each…

  • Genesis 8:15-9:17 The Rainbow Connection

    … God’s relationship to man is changing at this time… there seems to be more structure appearing… now God is explicitly including himself in the bargain… “God said unto Noah, This [is] the token of the covenant, which I have established between me and all flesh ” … God is…

  • Genesis 7:1-8:14 Lifeboat

    And the LORD said unto Noah, Come thou and all thy house into the ark; for thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation … to keep seed alive upon the face of all the earth … The parallel is highly suggestive – that preserving continuity of life…

  • Genesis 6:1-6:22 Way Out, Noah

    …”And the LORD said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth”… It’s enough to make you sympathize with the view that it was some random natural catastrophe, or that the Old Testament God was arbitrary and violent … Put another way, it appears…