You know, I found a long time ago what being self-righteous is and what being righteous in one’s own eyes is. One knows the act is nonsense but uses it as a cover-up, and the other thinks that doing good makes one immune from going through trials because one has done good.
Today at work, I found out something that made me sad, and I guess I took it personally, like it happened to me. But even then, I know that sometimes things happen because of what some people did in the past. Like I had a friend during NYSC who was doing back business for himself; he currently has his own business, and people are doing the same to him.
But somehow, the hardest thing for me to do is not to interfere—especially when I realize it’s someone else’s business. I’m reminded of the simple wisdom in Job: that I should not be wise in my own eyes. I understand how Prophet Habakkuk must have felt—when you want to interfere, but God says, “I am doing something… wait and watch; it will surely come to pass. Though it lingers, it will not tarry.”
Sometimes I’m like, “Hold your peace, let me alone, that I may speak, and let come on me what will” (Job 13:13).
It’s a funny thing—Job was one of the books of the Bible I never liked to read, but as I mature, it makes more sense to me.
I have to be at peace with this: “With God is strength and wisdom; the deceived and the deceiver are His” (Job 12:16). Job 13:7—can we speak wickedly for God or talk deceitfully for Him? No matter how right we seem in our own eyes, it’s not Good, if He (God) searches us out. Or would we be like one who mocks another? (Job 13:9).
You know, someone told Job that wisdom would die with him. I don’t believe in correcting someone more than once. For a believer: rebuke the person, expose them to counsel, and then leave it. After all, it is God who removes the speech of the trustworthy and takes away the understanding of the aged—so even aged people can lose the ability to understand. (Job 12: 20).
God increases nations and destroys them; He enlarges nations and then restrains them again. (Job 12: 23). As I sign of with Job 14: 2 “He cometh forth like a flower, and is cut down, he fleeth, also as a shadow, and continues not.