Have you ever looked and looked for something and couldn’t find it? You misplaced your cell phone. Did you set it down somewhere? Did it fall out of your pocket? At times, our lost objects end up staying lost. Maybe most of the time, we find our lost things. At other times, we may know where it is, but it’s lost to us like when a teenager dropped an iPhone down an outhouse-type toilet on top of a mountain in the Colorado Rockies. The teen knew where it was—20 or more feet down, but it was gone for good.
Speaking of looking, a middle-aged wife was looking for something and couldn’t find it anywhere. The husband was encouraged to look as well, and, upon his finding it, he let his wife know that he had found it. Then he turned to her and said, “Honey, you just don’t look as good as you used to.”
The Old Testament man Job was in a looking moment, too. God allowed the devil to afflict him, and he was also being verbally pummeled by his know-it-all so-called friends. Job felt that he couldn’t find God. In the midst of his affliction, he was looking, but he was turning up empty-handed. “Then Job answered: …His hand is heavy despite my groaning. If only I knew how to find Him, so that I could go to His throne. …If I go east, He is not there, and if I go west, I cannot perceive Him. When He is at work to the north, I cannot see Him; when He turns south, I cannot find Him. Yet He knows the way I have taken…” (Job 23).
Isn’t that how we feel at times, too? We journey through some dark valley, and it seems that God doesn’t hear our cries or has abandoned us. We feel that our prayers are not reaching Him for some reason. God’s silence can be an awful noise to us when we’re in a bad way. Now the truth is that we could have unconfessed sin or an unrepentant lifestyle to blame for the silence, but sometimes there is not really any human reason why the silence exists. It could be as in Job’s case: we’re just getting our fill of affliction from the enemy. However, we need to do some soul-searching anyway. Our affliction should be a reminder to return to God whether we’ve strayed or not, and if we still can’t find God, trust that He’s there even when we can’t feel Him—even when our feelings are betraying us.
This week you’ll read…
Job 22-32: “I made a covenant with my eyes not to look with lust at a young woman” (Job 31 NLT)
Revelation 6-12: “Then war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon. The dragon and his angels also fought, but he could not prevail, and there was no place for them in heaven any longer. So the great dragon was thrown out—the ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the one who deceives the whole world. He was thrown to earth, and his angels with him” (Revelation 12 CSB).
- December 15 (Sun):
- December 16 (Mon):
- December 17 (Tues):
- December 18 (Wed):
- December 19 (Thurs):
- December 20 (Fri):
- December 21 (Sat):
CSB are daily readings linked to The Christian Standard Bible on BibleGateway.com.
MSG are daily readings linked to The Message Bible on BibleGateway.com.
NLT are daily readings linked to The New Living Translation on BibleGateway.com.
Thoughts on Life and Jesus 