For a little while they are exalted, and then they are gone; they are brought low and gathered up like all others; they are cut off like heads of grain. – Job 24:24

Today’s Scripture Reading (May 10, 2015): Job 24

Author Phil Kenneson (Life on the Vine) tells a story of a vine that grew in his backyard when he was a child. He says that there was a grape arbor that grew behind the house that his parents had rented to live in. But the only way that he knew it was a grape arbor was because someone had told him that that was what it was. No fruit ever appeared on the vine that grew on the arbor. But the growing of grapes was the intended purpose to this thing that stood in the backyard - it was deigned to grow grapes. It was just that fruit just never appeared.

But one day he was outside playing with this brother and in the midst of their play they noticed that something had appeared on the vines growing on the grape arbor. The growths were spherical in nature, small, and a deep purple in color. Phil and his brother had no doubt what they were – the grapes that had been missing on the vines on the grape arbor had finally showed up. Phil says that his brother was the more courageous of the two, and so he picked some of the fruit, and tasted it (and they did not taste like grapes). And then they noticed that there was this dye inside of them that stained everything that it came in contact with, and so the boys had fun exploding the berries over each other. Finally they ran into their house to tell mom of their grand discovery – the grape arbor finally had grapes.

They were expecting one reaction, the elation of mom, but what they got was something different. Mom, who happened to be a nurse, knew something that the Kenneson boys simply did not know. There were no grapes growing on the grape arbor. There was a weed that produced a poisonous purple berry that was growing on the grape arbor. Phil’s brother did get sick from the experience, but he would recover. But both boys learned a lesson – there is such a thing as counterfeit fruit.

Job’s friends are sure that the fruit of Job’s life, essentially the fruit of his misery, was definite evidence of his Job’s sin. But Job turns the conversation around and begins to discuss something that he has noticed - that the wicked sometimes prosper – even if it is prospering that involves counterfeit fruit. They do what is wrong and yet they receive the fruit that Job’s friends seem to believe is reserved for the righteous. And if the wicked receive what is good, is it that far beyond our imagination that sometimes the righteous reap what is bad.

Yet Job also realizes something more. The success of the wicked – and hopefully the misery of the righteous - is only a temporary phenomenon. God’s justice will not allow for them to reap the good benefits forever. For a little while they were exalted. But soon they will be brought low – just as everyone else was. Because in the end it is only God who really has the authority to lift them up. There is a great equality with God, even if it is that he brings everyone low.

But that is the only hope that Job has left. Even though he has been brought low, one day the wicked the good fruits of the righteous will also be brought low. And in that day Job hopes that he will be among the number that God will lift back up.

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: Job 25 & 26