20240716

no limits

Job 38:1-41 (JDV)

Job 38:1 Then Yahveh answered Job from the whirlwind. He said:
Job 38:2 Who is this who obscures my counsel with ignorant words?
Job 38:3 Get ready to answer me like a healthy man; when I question you, you will inform me.
Job 38:4 Where were you when I established the land? Tell me if you have insight.
Job 38:5 Who fixed its dimensions? Certainly, you know! Or, who stretched a measuring line across it?
Job 38:6 What supports its bases? Or who laid its cornerstone
Job 38:7 while the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy?
Job 38:8 Who enclosed the sea behind doors when it burst from the womb,
Job 38:9 when I made the clouds its garment and total darkness its blanket,
Job 38:10 when I determined its boundaries and put its bars and doors in place,
Job 38:11 when I declared: “You may come this far, but no farther; your proud waves stop here”?
Job 38:12 Have you ever in your life commanded the morning or assigned the dawn its place,
Job 38:13 so it may seize the edges of the land and shake the wicked out of it?
Job 38:14 The land is changed as clay is by a seal; its hills stand out like the folds of a garment.
Job 38:15 Light is withheld from the wicked, and the arm raised in violence is broken.
Job 38:16 Have you traveled to the sources of the sea or walked in the depths of the oceans?
Job 38:17 Have the gates of death been revealed to you? Have you seen the gates of deep darkness?
Job 38:18 Have you comprehended the extent of the land? Tell me if you know all this.
Job 38:19 Where is the road to the home of light? Do you know where darkness lives,
Job 38:20 so you can lead it back to its border? Are you familiar with the paths to its home?
Job 38:21 Don’t you know? You were already born; you have lived so long!
Job 38:22 Have you entered the place where the snow is stored? Or have you seen the storehouses of hail,
Job 38:23 which I hold in reserve for times of trouble, for the day of warfare and battle?
Job 38:24 What road leads to the place where light is dispersed? Where is the source of the east wind that spreads across the ground?
Job 38:25 Who cuts a channel for the flooding rain or clears the way for lightning,
Job 38:26 to bring rain on an uninhabited ground, on a desert with no human life,
Job 38:27 to satisfy the parched wasteland and cause the grass to sprout?
Job 38:28 Does the rain have a father? Who fathered the drops of dew?
Job 38:29 Whose womb did the ice come from? Who gave birth to the frost of the sky
Job 38:30 when water becomes as hard as stone, and the surface of the watery depths is frozen?
Job 38:31 Can you fasten the chains of the Pleiades or loosen the belt of Orion?
Job 38:32 Can you bring out the constellations in their season and lead the Bear and her cubs?
Job 38:33 Do you know the laws of the sky? Can you impose its authority on the ground?
Job 38:34 Can you command the clouds so that a flood of water covers you?
Job 38:35 Can you send out lightning bolts, and they go? Do they report to you: “Here we are”?
Job 38:36 Who put wisdom in the heart or gave the mind insight?
Job 38:37 Who has the wisdom to number the clouds? Or who can tilt the water jars of the sky
Job 38:38 when the dust hardens like cast metal and the clods of dirt stick together?
Job 38:39 Can you hunt prey for a lioness or satisfy the appetite of young lions
Job 38:40 when they crouch in their dens and lie in wait within their lairs?
Job 38:41 Who provides the raven’s food when its young cry out to God and wander about for lack of food?

no limits

The LORD comes on the scene in a dramatic and powerful way. All this time, he had been waiting for the experts on him to finish their babbling. Now he takes center stage and confronts Job with his omniscience and omnipotence. Job knows that there are no limits with God. He is grateful that he has a chance to remind his therapists of that fact. They were guilty of limiting and prescribing the way that God would act. We are never more in danger than when we think we have God figured out.

LORD, thank you that your ways are past our finding out. There are no limits to you.