Job 16:20

20 My friends [rea`] scorn [luwts] me: but mine eye [`ayin] poureth out [dalaph] tears unto God ['elowahh]. KJV-Interlinear

20 'My friends are my scoffers; My eye weeps to God. NASB

All of life is a shadow of the ultimate reality. We have studied shadows and its significance before, in our study of the earthly temple verses the one in heaven. Of course, you recall that God is the ultimate temple.

When a person is born, they look like an infant. Their looks change as they grow into a toddler, and again as they grow into a teenager, then a young adult, an older adult and finally when they hit the elderly stages of life.

Attitudes, appearances, and personalities change with each year of growth. We will not be in our final stage of life until the resurrection, and then we will not be totally complete until human history ends and eternity and the new universe begins.

Until that time, we live in an age of shadows. Shadows do not reflect the total essence of the thing that causes them. Shadows do not have the detail, texture, depth, aroma, color or feel of the real thing. And just as the Bible has represented the things of this world as mere shadows of the real thing, so too, our lives are just as incomplete in this life. And, just as fleeting, brief, and unstable.

Job had difficulties fall all over his life. His friends, who should have stood beside him regardless of the reasons for his misery, instead became antagonistic against him.

In this world, there is nothing which can be counted on. Solomon calls all things of this world, vanity, empty, nothings.

You cannot count on yourself, on family, on friends, certainly not on strangers. You cannot count on the many systems of bureaucracy in this world to help you out when times get tough. All things are temporary, if they exist at all for you.

Jesus Christ is the only true reality. It is through Him, and only through Him that we receive our salvation, our guarantees, our spiritual life. The world can offer nothing. The world has nothing to offer.

Of the four source categories of human trouble, which are personal thoughts, other people, bureaucracies, and disasters none of them offer any permanent solutions.

The only hope that any person can look to, is God. There is no other source, no other power, no other person in existence, that can do anything for us.

Jesus Christ controls history. All of it.

Now is the time to post a prayer.