God's Ying/Yang Power

Day 18 – Job 12-14

Job 12:13-25 “To God belong wisdom and power; counsel and understanding are his. What he tears down cannot be rebuilt; those he imprisons cannot be released. If he holds back the waters, there is drought; if he lets them loose, they devastate the land. To him belong strength and insight; both deceived and deceiver are his. He leads rulers away stripped and makes fools of judges. He takes off the shackles put on by kings and ties a loincloth^[a] around their waist. He leads priests away stripped and overthrows officials long established. He silences the lips of trusted advisers and takes away the discernment of elders. He pours contempt on nobles and disarms the mighty. He reveals the deep things of darkness and brings utter darkness into the light. He makes nations great, and destroys them; he enlarges nations, and disperses them. He deprives the leaders of the earth of their reason; he makes them wander in a trackless waste. They grope in darkness with no light; he makes them stagger like drunkards.”

In these verses, God’s power is spelled out in a sort of ying/yang way.  Explaining all the things God can give and all the things God can take away.  Job is making sure we understand that God works the full range of the spectrum.  As I mentioned a couple days ago.  I think we forget that God will give us “tests” as He did Job, and why shouldn’t He.  No one ever told me in Sunday School that being a Christian was to be easy.  However, I will say the focus was on how much good God does and it seems to me the only tests we are told about are those Satan gives.  I don’t recall talking about God’s tests.  I will admit that it has been some time ago, but as I think back conversations of God’s tests didn’t start until confirmation days.  I wonder why that is.  Or did we talk about it, but all I can remember is the good.  We talked about the flood but focused on Noah, not why God destroyed the Earth and everything on it.  Shouldn’t we learn that it is important to both love and fear God?  He is the strongest power.  These verses are a good reminder of how quickly and easily it would be for God to take away anything I have or He could just as easily double it.