When You Look Back on the Days You Have Lost, Where Are You?

Job Chapter 29

Job recalls the days that have passed.

God’s lamp shone over his head.

He was respected.

He helped the poor.

He practiced justice.

Job looks back

on who he once was.

He was protected by God.

He was honored by others.

He was doing what was right.

Those memories stand

in contrast to the present,

where everything has been lost.

When people look back,

they often think,

“Those were the good days.”

Yet within those memories

there remains the memory

of one’s own righteousness.

What God had done

begins to fade behind

what I was doing.

When you look back

on the days you have lost,

where are you?

Do you remain

in the glory of the past?

What stands at the center

of your story?

What God has done?

Or what you were doing?

Or do you stand before God

as you are now,

in the present that has been stripped away?

Job remembers

the days that once were.

Alongside the memory

of God's grace

is the memoryof his own righteousness.

What God had done—

or what I was doing?

The boundary between them

is so thin

that it is easy not to notice.

God is still silent.

God’s grace or my own righteousness? The line between them is so thin that it is easy to miss.