Wendy Ripaldi's blog

As a group we were talking yesterday and I made a reference to the book of Job and how I felt like him with the struggles I have had over the last three years. It prompted me to rekindle my relationship with this story and I have been reading the book of Job again today. This particular passage stood out to me and really is a reflection on how I feel about my life and why I feel like I have so much in common with Job's struggle with the circumstances he was placed in, Job 9:21-35. 21Though I were perfect, yet would I not know my soul; I would despise my life. 22This is all one thing. Therefore I said it: `He destroyeth the perfect and the wicked.' 23If the scourge slay suddenly, He will laugh at the trial of the innocent. 24The earth is given into the hand of the wicked. He covereth the faces of the judges thereof. If not, where and who is He? 25"Now my days are swifter than a runner; they flee away, they see no good. 26They are passed away as the swift ships, as the eagle that hasteneth to the prey. 27If I say, `I will forget my complaint, I will leave off my heaviness and comfort myself,' 28I am afraid of all my sorrows; I know that Thou wilt not hold me innocent. 29If I be wicked, why then labor I in vain? 30If I wash myself with snow water and make my hands never so clean, 31yet shalt Thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me. 32For He is not a man as I am, that I should answer Him and we should come together in judgment. 33Neither is there any mediator between us who might lay his hand upon us both. 34Let Him take His rod away from me, and let not fear of Him terrify me. 35Then would I speak and not fear Him, but it is not so with me. It seems like I struggle with the evil that lays deep within me and lashes out at the world around me. This passage is like a reminder that the evil is there and that it keeps me seperate from God, I have no favor with Him.