What they trust in is fragile;
what they rely on is a spider’s web.
They lean on the web, but it gives way;
they cling to it, but it does not hold. (Job 8:14-15, NIV)
Just days ago, I was speaking to a young man who in the early 2010s was part of the high school golf team I coached. He was a solid player with the most naturally fluid swing I have ever seen in the game (sorry, Freddie Couples). His putting and short game were solid, and so he competed well in the local ranks and went on to play four competitive years of Division 2 golf.
But when we talked, he told me his game had fallen into nasty disrepair. Namely, his chipping and putting were a wreck. Of course, he is in dental school now, so he never practices. He has a perfect excuse but, as so many of us would do, he expressed disappointment that the foundations of his game had been so badly compromised.
Our golf games are not magical. They mature with an accumulation of practice and play. Without these, though, they can turn rather quickly to frameless abstraction. The art fades, and we can’t hide even from ourselves.
Not far from this lie the matters of life, which are also dependent on attention and care if they are to remain in good repair. Lasting growth does not happen by accident, and it is certainly not maintained by occasional lip service.
‘Because I have all this stocked up,’ he mused, ‘I can take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.’
So the bottom line is this: We cannot just add to the content of our lives—and wow, is there ample opportunity for that these days! We must add content that leads to life, now and into eternity.
Our passage today from Job 8, which exposes by lively metaphor the grave error of chasing after things that do not matter, leaves us asking a central question: What is my life based upon, and is it any less fragile than a spider’s web?
Jesus may have had Job 8 in mind when he told the Parable of the Rich Fool. In it, we find a man who enjoyed a bumper crop and started counting his storehouses. “Because I have all this stocked up,” he mused, “I can take life easy; eat, drink and be merry.”
But God met the man’s bluster, saying, “You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?” His story over, Jesus turned to his listeners and said, “This is how it will be with whoever stores up things for themselves but is not rich toward God” (Luke 12:21).
Jesus didn’t always explain his parables or wrap them up with a tidy one-liner. But here he must have wanted no one to miss the point: You can spend your life amassing worthless content, or you can store up “treasures in heaven.” The choice should seem rather obvious by now.
—
Jeff Hopper
September 7, 2021
Copyright 2021 Links Players International
The Links Daily Devotional appears Monday-Friday at www.linksplayers.com.
Image by ClaudiaWollesen from Pixabay