Here we are, entering into that time of the year where retailers set bargains. Jobs and schools prepare for parties. And family, friends and neighbors prepare for gift exchanges and celebratory meals.
As joyous as this sounds, the reality is this year we’ve endured so much as people all over the nation. Reflecting over the year, we realize:
1) Inflation has caused necessities to be high priced.
2) There’s been a record number of union employee strikes to include; the automotive entertainment, postal and commercial airline industry.
3) Wars in Russia/Ukraine and Israel/Hamas.
4) Immigrants are overruning boarders
5) And indiscretions among our nations leaders
continue to be revealed
People are strechted, stressed and filled with anxiety. And we all wonder how did we get here?
The book of Job invites us to trust God’s wisdom and character no matter our circumstances. Job was a perfect an upright man that eschewed evil. He shows how devotion to God can sustain a person through any adversity.
During his adversity, friends questioned his integrity and his wife in Job 2:9 said,
‘curse God and die.’ These friends and family saw his diseased ridden body as his end. But he remained upright and God gave him understanding and wisdom.
In Job 12, he points us to God during adversity:
v9 Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the Lord hath wrought this?
v10 In whose hand is the soul of every living thing, and the breath of all mankind.
v13 With him is wisdom and strength, he hath counsel and understanding.
v16 With him is strength and wisdom: the deceived and the deceiver are his.
v23 He increaseth the nations, and destroyeth them: he enlargeth the nations, and straiteneth them again.
v24 He taketh away the heart of the chief of the people of the earth, and causeth them to wander in a wilderness where there is no way.
Can you see the lifeline God extended to Job?
It was his choice to live righteous before God.
God is love (1 John 4:8), but hates wickedness (Hosea 9:15). God’s nature is love—He always does what is best for others—and He hates what is contrary to His nature—He hates what is contrary to love.
John 3:16, For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
Just think, with all that is happening today we are experiencing adversity Iike Job minus the boils. And God extends to us the same lifeline which is the choice to live holy and righteous before him.
Hebrews 9:27-28:
And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.
The DNA of love from God is in the air as it is in the fiber of everything God created and begot including his offspring.
Acts 17:28, For in him we live, and move, and have our being; as certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring.
The challenge this month: is as we prepare for Christmas rejoice that LOVE IS IN THE AIR!
