Brothers Keeping: Joseph and Job by Tristam Joseph
existence. Your words offering no comfort ally with God's wrath to compound my misery. Must I hear more of your incriminations, critical of my uprightness, belittling my blamelessness, destroying everything, bringing me no comfort?
Joseph: God has settled no new dreams on my slumber, no visions to unveil awareness, nothing for answering your injustice. He may have already revealed enough, enlightening your understanding of His ways, but still dimly seen until you move closer to Him, waiting in unwavering patience, hoping for you to acknowledge Him as your redeemer, the Savior you long for.
Job: Patience for what? For more to suffer? I have submitted all the arguments He needs and sometimes wonder if He hears me, my voice and prayers for mercy. Maybe my words should be documented, written, inscribed on a scroll, ones He could not ignore, preserving them, enduring until a Redeemer comes to save me, trusting in One who lives, remembering someone promising, I know my redeemer lives, someday to stand here with me, surviving attack by tormentors, equipped with powers for healing, promising to take me to a better place, one already prepared for me, having judged me worthy, asking only that I wait for His Day. Never choosing to rant from a troubled mind, trust my words are truthful and reasonable, hoping my accuser has resigned.
Joseph: Eternal God, knowing all, requesting nothing to be in writing, gifts humans to be scribes, realizing their memories are short, requiring plaques to preserve their thoughts and deeds, documenting their blamelessness, giving the Judge unneeded evidence to consider on His day. Fear the Judge, now before His Day of the Lord, before you can see Him with your arguments, before His execution of judgment, acting now before it is too late, waylaying vengeance before it can strike.
Wiseman: Consider who Job censures with his thoughts, voicing unacceptable words, awakening me to respond, revealing how his spirit answers, criticizing calamities he endures, sufferings allowed by God but never condoned by Him, attributing Job's torments to God's passive indifference, forfeiting His sovereignty to another, giving up rights for judgment to messengers, commissioned to see all evil and judge those guilty of crime.
Joseph: Is this the call of all human beings?
Wiseman: If this is the claim of all, professing to be blameless, believing an impossibility for being righteous, deceiving themselves to become hypocrites, never wanting to follow the Lord, the God hypocrites worship, prideful ones mounted up as high as the heavens, claiming to be saints as holy ones before, but such hypocrites are damned, perpetual sinners, forever doomed to be merely dust, to be blown away like a dream, never to be found, chased away by time like visions of the night. Eyes seeking such ones find them no more, beholding their place empty, their wealth vanished, their children seeking favors for the poor. Hypocrites continuously seek revelations from God, using His truths to bolster their arguments, proclaiming His truths to live their way, honoring Him with their lips, worshipping Him in vain, while living by the wisdom established by them for their reality, honoring rules fabricated by humans.
Bystander: God asks, Why should you declare my statutes, for what reason should you broadcast my covenant from your mouth? Hypocrites appearing to honor His revelations, but striving to avoid them, dooming themselves by their judgement, are condemned for disobedience, whereas not even bad people are denied God's good gifts, remembering His promises are everlasting, His will to maintain creation's goodness.
Wiseman: The Lord should ask Job, Were your riches unjustly gathered, collected to build your fame, celebrated to demonstrate your prowess, but created from plunder, stolen by cheating the unsuspecting poor? Justly derived treasures, self-justified but really thefts, are recovered by time, waiting for God's justice to prevail, decaying all you hold dear, assuring replenishment to maintain the earth's promise, providing all human needs, recycling our effort's treasures, terminating inclinations to hoard, ceasing accumulations for wealth, changing what constitutes affluence. Goods amassed will not flourish joy, becoming corrupted while still in bloom, justifying God's fury to assail hoarders with His wrath.
Job: Your words are unjustly gathered, more than the pious for themselves, but if you are willing to hear, listen carefully to my words, and let this be your consolation, bear with me, and I will speak, and after I have spoken you are free to mock on.
Reckoner: I will also listen unless some evil spirit seizes control of your tongue, directing your words to appear blameless.
Job: My complaint is not against ones like you, sinful as wise ones always are, but in dismay I ask why the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? Am I ungodly, prospering, with the godly fated to suffer, so God converted my ungodly prosperity to godly suffering? Could He not have created me to forego prosperity, to be godly and suffer, having no temptation for me to prosper in wealth? But He who made me must blame me, not you, a mortal person who shouldn't judge me, puzzling me if I should remain silent, never attempting any response to your indictments. Can my maker justify any blame for one He creates, expecting all to obey His commission, fulfilling his decree to be fruitful and multiply, to exercise dominion over all entrusted to them? I still wait for an answer.
Reckoner: God must always reach out to the wicked and ungodly, blessing them with prosperity if needed, patiently waiting for them to see His ways, to obey His commands, to follow Him, realizing He would never ignore them and forever reject them, denying them from His presence, but He offers His love to the unrighteous as well as the righteous, priding Himself as the God of love.
Job: What kind of Almighty do we share in our thoughts and words? Why must your ideas differ from mine? I know you as a fellow creature never out of sight and mind, but I know little of God who I never see or hear, confirming I can never know what my senses cannot reveal, my perceptions never able to stretch out and behold God. Incapable of appreciating God, unfit to know who He is, people pray for visible gods--idols--ones they can see and imagine to hear, never for the invisible unseen God and what He purports to promise, leading them to pray for things of this world and seldom for what might be in His world. Is it wrong to be so concerned with things of this world, praying to name and claim our blessings. I ask you, Who is the Almighty, proclaiming we should serve Him? And what profit do we receive if we pray to Him?
Reckoner: I see you as one of the world, caught between being righteous and wicked, compromising by being neither, satisfied by being blameless, questioning no justice for the wicked and no suffering for the righteous. Does your wisdom answer this dilemma?
Job: Is the lamp of the wicked seldom snuffed out prematurely, precipitating calamity to inflict them with suffering, witnessing to God's wrath, distributing pain, vexing His displeasure, inflicting wicked ones with His anger, or is their deserving afflictions short-lived, leaving no lasting memory? My suffering is unjust, ignoring my upright deservings, revisiting my trivial sins--if any--condemning my generations to come, destroying any hope for their ever being, voiding their existence of worthy virtue.
Bystander: The light of the righteous forever shines, burning brightly, preparing humankind for the eternal light of God's glory, asking, Do you see that promise? The light of the sinner is always snuffed out, prematurely yes, ending with time allotted for human life, never continuing as the eternal life knowing no darkness.
Reckoner: Counted as one blameless, Job can't understand why he is punished as the ungodly. He began his thought's footsteps on gratifications rewarded by life here, forgetting God's commands, ignoring promises for eternal life, never neglecting obeisance to his idols, drawing a veil over his activities, concealing his deeds, giving no cause to accuse him of being evil. Wedded to the glory of his circumstances, thriving in opportunities for unending happiness, blessed by many accomplishments, Job deserved to eventually suffer, coming long overdue, waking him up to experience how most human beings live. Job should rejoice, for God weakening him before it is too late, saving him from His patience growing impatient, suffering Him to watch ones with frivolity as their only pastime, fating them to be condemned,
marked for certain eternal punishment, walking the ways of the unrepentant. Why should God meddle with deeds of the wicked, far from rescue, ignoring His decrees, dismissing how great is His mercy, if their fate has already been determined? Let them continue in their ways, ones sealed for belonging to Satan. Job must accept his fate as a wayfarer, existing here only for a moment, and accept what has happened to him, a predictable destiny for those never reaching out to God.
Job: All your answers, having never discovered truth, are delinquent in comforting me with their nothingness.
Reckoner: My words have been too kind, passing over you with no discernment beyond your unwrapped understanding, received by you as trivial wisdom, telling how a person can be profitable to please God, showing how one can change, transfigured from one whose own truths are the only ones fruitful to one's myself. Can you please the Almighty by choosing to become righteous, or are you content by remaining in your blameless ways?
Job: My wisdom has been of service to
Joseph: God has settled no new dreams on my slumber, no visions to unveil awareness, nothing for answering your injustice. He may have already revealed enough, enlightening your understanding of His ways, but still dimly seen until you move closer to Him, waiting in unwavering patience, hoping for you to acknowledge Him as your redeemer, the Savior you long for.
Job: Patience for what? For more to suffer? I have submitted all the arguments He needs and sometimes wonder if He hears me, my voice and prayers for mercy. Maybe my words should be documented, written, inscribed on a scroll, ones He could not ignore, preserving them, enduring until a Redeemer comes to save me, trusting in One who lives, remembering someone promising, I know my redeemer lives, someday to stand here with me, surviving attack by tormentors, equipped with powers for healing, promising to take me to a better place, one already prepared for me, having judged me worthy, asking only that I wait for His Day. Never choosing to rant from a troubled mind, trust my words are truthful and reasonable, hoping my accuser has resigned.
Joseph: Eternal God, knowing all, requesting nothing to be in writing, gifts humans to be scribes, realizing their memories are short, requiring plaques to preserve their thoughts and deeds, documenting their blamelessness, giving the Judge unneeded evidence to consider on His day. Fear the Judge, now before His Day of the Lord, before you can see Him with your arguments, before His execution of judgment, acting now before it is too late, waylaying vengeance before it can strike.
Wiseman: Consider who Job censures with his thoughts, voicing unacceptable words, awakening me to respond, revealing how his spirit answers, criticizing calamities he endures, sufferings allowed by God but never condoned by Him, attributing Job's torments to God's passive indifference, forfeiting His sovereignty to another, giving up rights for judgment to messengers, commissioned to see all evil and judge those guilty of crime.
Joseph: Is this the call of all human beings?
Wiseman: If this is the claim of all, professing to be blameless, believing an impossibility for being righteous, deceiving themselves to become hypocrites, never wanting to follow the Lord, the God hypocrites worship, prideful ones mounted up as high as the heavens, claiming to be saints as holy ones before, but such hypocrites are damned, perpetual sinners, forever doomed to be merely dust, to be blown away like a dream, never to be found, chased away by time like visions of the night. Eyes seeking such ones find them no more, beholding their place empty, their wealth vanished, their children seeking favors for the poor. Hypocrites continuously seek revelations from God, using His truths to bolster their arguments, proclaiming His truths to live their way, honoring Him with their lips, worshipping Him in vain, while living by the wisdom established by them for their reality, honoring rules fabricated by humans.
Bystander: God asks, Why should you declare my statutes, for what reason should you broadcast my covenant from your mouth? Hypocrites appearing to honor His revelations, but striving to avoid them, dooming themselves by their judgement, are condemned for disobedience, whereas not even bad people are denied God's good gifts, remembering His promises are everlasting, His will to maintain creation's goodness.
Wiseman: The Lord should ask Job, Were your riches unjustly gathered, collected to build your fame, celebrated to demonstrate your prowess, but created from plunder, stolen by cheating the unsuspecting poor? Justly derived treasures, self-justified but really thefts, are recovered by time, waiting for God's justice to prevail, decaying all you hold dear, assuring replenishment to maintain the earth's promise, providing all human needs, recycling our effort's treasures, terminating inclinations to hoard, ceasing accumulations for wealth, changing what constitutes affluence. Goods amassed will not flourish joy, becoming corrupted while still in bloom, justifying God's fury to assail hoarders with His wrath.
Job: Your words are unjustly gathered, more than the pious for themselves, but if you are willing to hear, listen carefully to my words, and let this be your consolation, bear with me, and I will speak, and after I have spoken you are free to mock on.
Reckoner: I will also listen unless some evil spirit seizes control of your tongue, directing your words to appear blameless.
Job: My complaint is not against ones like you, sinful as wise ones always are, but in dismay I ask why the wicked live, reach old age, and grow mighty in power? Am I ungodly, prospering, with the godly fated to suffer, so God converted my ungodly prosperity to godly suffering? Could He not have created me to forego prosperity, to be godly and suffer, having no temptation for me to prosper in wealth? But He who made me must blame me, not you, a mortal person who shouldn't judge me, puzzling me if I should remain silent, never attempting any response to your indictments. Can my maker justify any blame for one He creates, expecting all to obey His commission, fulfilling his decree to be fruitful and multiply, to exercise dominion over all entrusted to them? I still wait for an answer.
Reckoner: God must always reach out to the wicked and ungodly, blessing them with prosperity if needed, patiently waiting for them to see His ways, to obey His commands, to follow Him, realizing He would never ignore them and forever reject them, denying them from His presence, but He offers His love to the unrighteous as well as the righteous, priding Himself as the God of love.
Job: What kind of Almighty do we share in our thoughts and words? Why must your ideas differ from mine? I know you as a fellow creature never out of sight and mind, but I know little of God who I never see or hear, confirming I can never know what my senses cannot reveal, my perceptions never able to stretch out and behold God. Incapable of appreciating God, unfit to know who He is, people pray for visible gods--idols--ones they can see and imagine to hear, never for the invisible unseen God and what He purports to promise, leading them to pray for things of this world and seldom for what might be in His world. Is it wrong to be so concerned with things of this world, praying to name and claim our blessings. I ask you, Who is the Almighty, proclaiming we should serve Him? And what profit do we receive if we pray to Him?
Reckoner: I see you as one of the world, caught between being righteous and wicked, compromising by being neither, satisfied by being blameless, questioning no justice for the wicked and no suffering for the righteous. Does your wisdom answer this dilemma?
Job: Is the lamp of the wicked seldom snuffed out prematurely, precipitating calamity to inflict them with suffering, witnessing to God's wrath, distributing pain, vexing His displeasure, inflicting wicked ones with His anger, or is their deserving afflictions short-lived, leaving no lasting memory? My suffering is unjust, ignoring my upright deservings, revisiting my trivial sins--if any--condemning my generations to come, destroying any hope for their ever being, voiding their existence of worthy virtue.
Bystander: The light of the righteous forever shines, burning brightly, preparing humankind for the eternal light of God's glory, asking, Do you see that promise? The light of the sinner is always snuffed out, prematurely yes, ending with time allotted for human life, never continuing as the eternal life knowing no darkness.
Reckoner: Counted as one blameless, Job can't understand why he is punished as the ungodly. He began his thought's footsteps on gratifications rewarded by life here, forgetting God's commands, ignoring promises for eternal life, never neglecting obeisance to his idols, drawing a veil over his activities, concealing his deeds, giving no cause to accuse him of being evil. Wedded to the glory of his circumstances, thriving in opportunities for unending happiness, blessed by many accomplishments, Job deserved to eventually suffer, coming long overdue, waking him up to experience how most human beings live. Job should rejoice, for God weakening him before it is too late, saving him from His patience growing impatient, suffering Him to watch ones with frivolity as their only pastime, fating them to be condemned,
Job: All your answers, having never discovered truth, are delinquent in comforting me with their nothingness.
Reckoner: My words have been too kind, passing over you with no discernment beyond your unwrapped understanding, received by you as trivial wisdom, telling how a person can be profitable to please God, showing how one can change, transfigured from one whose own truths are the only ones fruitful to one's myself. Can you please the Almighty by choosing to become righteous, or are you content by remaining in your blameless ways?
Job: My wisdom has been of service to