{"id":5809,"date":"2014-09-14T00:05:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-14T07:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=5809"},"modified":"2014-09-13T19:59:04","modified_gmt":"2014-09-14T02:59:04","slug":"in-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2014\/09\/14\/in-control\/","title":{"rendered":"In Control?"},"content":{"rendered":"

When do mountain goats
\nand deer give birth?
\nHave you been there
\nwhen their young are born?
\nHow long are they pregnant
\nbefore they deliver?
\nSoon their young grow strong
\nand then leave
\nto be on their own.
\nWho set wild donkeys free?
\nI alone help them survive
\nin salty desert sand.
\nThey stay far from crowded cities
\nand refuse to be tamed.
\nInstead, they roam the hills,
\nsearching for pastureland.
\nWould a wild ox agree
\nto live in your barn
\nand labor for you?
\nCould you force him to plow
\nor to drag a heavy log
\nto smooth out the soil?
\nCan you depend on him
\nto use his great strength
\nand do your heavy work?
\nCan you trust him
\nto harvest your grain
\nor take it to your barn
\nfrom the threshing place? (Job 39:1-12)<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We don\u2019t have as much control over our own lives as we think. We cannot control the day of our birth, or the day of our death. We have no power over the forces of nature: rain or drought, storm or earthquake, illness or health. But we\u2019d like to be in control. <\/p>\n

God confronted Job with how little he controlled about his life. He couldn\u2019t make wild animals domesticated. He couldn\u2019t breed them or take their offspring for food or sacrifice. He couldn\u2019t rely on them to help him with his harvests. <\/p>\n

Job\u2019s friends believed that good things came to the good and bad to the bad. How people behaved determined the outcome of their lives. It was all up to them. That\u2019s why they insisted that Job had to be bad. If instead, the circumstances of life were not dependent upon their choices of behavior, that meant that they couldn\u2019t prevent bad things from happening to them. It was in God\u2019s hands, not theirs. They didn\u2019t like that. And really, Job didn\u2019t like it either. He\u2014and his friends\u2014trusted his life in his own hands more than in God\u2019s. Which God pointed out to him was both silly and foolish. Whose hands were better? Job, who knew and understood little, or God, who knew and understood everything? So what if Job didn\u2019t understand why the bad stuff had happened to him? Job didn\u2019t understand a lot of things. So what else was new? <\/p>\n

Our desire to control and manipulate our environment leads us to absurdities. We become superstitious, imagining that certain rituals, certain objects, can somehow allow us to control those things that we otherwise cannot.<\/p>\n

Send to Kindle<\/span><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When do mountain goats and deer give birth? Have you been there when their young are born? How long are they pregnant before they deliver? Soon their young grow strong and then leave to be on their own. Who set … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5809"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5811,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5809\/revisions\/5811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}