Job: A Parable for Today
Today, I opened my Lectionary to discover we are reading Job. I have special feelings for Job; I was sitting my my Arabic class at the Qatar Center for the Presentation of Islam when my teacher started talking about a character named Ayyoub, and Ayyoub sounded a whole lot like Job. This was a huge “Aha” moment for me – all the years I had lived in the Middle East and I never knew we shared the same prophets, and that the Quran related many of the same experiences as our Bible.
Job is thought to be the oldest writing in our Bible, and as I read it today, I read it as a parable, with Job standing for the USA, and the devil encouraging the Almighty to test Job. Job loses all his precious children, all this animals, all his wealth – and he refuses to curse God.
Job 1:1-22
1There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. 2There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. 3He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, and very many servants; so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east. 4His sons used to go and hold feasts in one another’s houses in turn; and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. 5And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt-offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, ‘It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.’ This is what Job always did.
6 One day the heavenly beings* came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan* also came among them. 7The Lord said to Satan,*‘Where have you come from?’ Satan* answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’ 8The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Have you considered my servant Job? There is no one like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man who fears God and turns away from evil.’ 9Then Satan* answered the Lord, ‘Does Job fear God for nothing? 10Have you not put a fence around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land. 11But stretch out your hand now, and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.’ 12The Lord said to Satan,* ‘Very well, all that he has is in your power; only do not stretch out your hand against him!’ So Satan* went out from the presence of the Lord.
13 One day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in the eldest brother’s house, 14a messenger came to Job and said, ‘The oxen were ploughing and the donkeys were feeding beside them, 15and the Sabeans fell on them and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 16While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The fire of God fell from heaven and burned up the sheep and the servants, and consumed them; I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 17While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘The Chaldeans formed three columns, made a raid on the camels and carried them off, and killed the servants with the edge of the sword; I alone have escaped to tell you.’ 18While he was still speaking, another came and said, ‘Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their eldest brother’s house, 19and suddenly a great wind came across the desert, struck the four corners of the house, and it fell on the young people, and they are dead; I alone have escaped to tell you.’
20 Then Job arose, tore his robe, shaved his head, and fell on the ground and worshipped. 21He said, ‘Naked I came from my mother’s womb, and naked shall I return there; the Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.’
22 In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrongdoing.
The Strait of Hormuz, 17 August 2026
Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has effectively ground to a halt as a fragile U.S.-Iran ceasefire expires and recent tanker attacks deter operators. Daily transits have plummeted to just 3 to 4 commercial crossings—down roughly 90% from pre-crisis levels—leaving a massive backlog of thousands of idling vessels waiting offshore.
Current Traffic Status
- Daily Transits: Only 3 to 4 verified ship crossings occurred over the last 24 hours, compared to pre-conflict averages of 60 to 135 daily.
- Vessel Backlog: Approximately 3,200 ships—including roughly 800 oil tankers and cargo carriers—remain backed up and idling west of the waterway.
- Oil Shipments: Commercial crude oil and major petroleum product shipments are virtually non-existent as operators adopt a strict wait-and-see stance.
How a Grown Up Ends a War and Wins
It is not my intention here to give our current president a strategy for a gracious exit from the War with Iran. I am writing this only because I believe he is incapable of adopting my solution.
Years ago, my very smart husband, AdventureMan and I played strategic board games. One time, I beat him in only six moves, at which point he stood up and stomped his foot (a very strong statement from a normally restrained man) and yelled “You can’t do that! It’s unorthodox!”
And that’s how wars are won. Yes, you can waste billions on sophisticated weaponry, and have a lot of fun with bombs and destruction. High T at work. You can also waste lives, and I believe that is a crime against your country. Our young people are not expendable.
We’ve all started fights we can’t win. It’s wired into us as human beings. What is the way out?
“I’ve made a big mistake. I take full responsibility. I’m sorry I got us into this mess, and now, I am going to do everything in my power to make it right.”
Those words, and the humility it takes to say them, save relationships, re-establish peace, and a firm foundation for moving forward.
It takes a grown-up to say them. It takes a grown-up to even think them. To continue on a losing path is wasteful and self-destructive.
We are not winning.
It’s time to own up, exit, and begin rebuilding our alliances.
New York’s Participation Trophy for Trump and his Iranian debacle. Everyone invited to contribute; no achievement too paltry to commemorate. The more gilt, the merrier.
Bab el Mendeb and the Strait of Hormuz
Most people have no idea why these chokepoints are so important until they see it with their own eyes. Here is what they look like on Google Earth.
The Bab el Mendeb is at the tip of Djibouti, on the left. The Strait of Hormuz is between Iran and the northern tip of Oman, on your right. Qatar is that little thumb of land sticking out in the Persian Gulf.
Saudi Arabian oil and Qatari natural gas are blocked if these two chokepoints are no longer open.
Four years ago, during the last World Cup, we were on the Oceania Nautica and went through the Suez Canal, the Bab el Mandeb, and the Strait of Hormuz. We booked this tour especially to see these geographic chokepoints. We were shocked when there was no lecture on these geographic features, their origins, or their importance as shipping lanes – and there was no announcement when we went through the Bab or the Strait. Imagine!
Haunting Verse From Kipling
THE NAULAHKA
Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles, and the Aryan smiles and he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone white with the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph drear: “A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East.”
Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936).
Verse: 1885–1918. 1922.
Stranger in a Strange Land: High School
Today’s writing prompt is irresistible: Something you learned in High School.
I left my US High School mid-year to live in Germany, and to go to a US Department of Defense High School.
I learned that not everyone thinks the same way I think.
I learned that sometimes the way I think might even be wrong, or incomplete.
I learned that even within our own culture, there may be varieties of cultures and many different ways to do a thing, and that none is truly the “right” way, that there may be many right ways.
I learned to lean back and observe, before I ventured an opinion.
I learned to listen when someone said I was wrong. I didn’t have to agree, but it helped to get this other perspective (no matter how mistaken it might have been, LOL)
After high school, I lived a nomadic life, back and forth to university, then marrying a military man and being on the move for the next forty years. Some of my best friends to this day are friends I made during those high school years, people who have led very different lives, but who still share so much in common because of our uncommon heritage and our diverse views. Learning that kind of flexibility eased the way in later life, living in different cultures in Germany, in Africa and in the Middle East and finally, in the Deep South. I’m still learning! 🙏😄🙏
Slight of Hand and Wires and Mirrors; No Accountability
Our leader announced a speech to the nation, which turned out to be nothing but repeats of “Truth” social posts and comments previously made. A boring, disjointed 19 minutes of nothing credible. Credibility is stating a mission and following through. Chaos is changing the mission and its achievements every ten minutes or so. If you don’t believe me, watch the stock market.
Meanwhile, behind the curtain, The Great Oz and his handlers are changing how our democracy operates. The failed military officer, Pete Hegseth is examining and removing African Americans, females, and especially African American Females from promotion lists. He is firing the top general who questions his judgement in toying with a time honored system where the military chooses its leaders based on performance and leadership abilities, not their gender nor their color.
Does Hegseth understand demographics? Does he understand that military recruitment is problematic these days days, that the pool of recruits has shrunk dramatically? Does he understand that brawn no longer wins wars, but fighter planes, drones, new ideas and weapon development are fighting a new kind of war, where every gender and color contributes the the nuances of creative strategies available to a commander in chief who genuinely understands how to function in the fog of war?
Today Heather Cox Richardson alerts us to another slight of hand, the kind of small change the controllers hope will go unnoticed: The challenge of ACCOUNTABILITY and how it impedes a sitting President. She quotes the following, and it quite takes my breath away:
Yesterday Assistant Attorney General T. Elliot Gaiser, of the Office of Legal Counsel, published an opinion for the White House that claims the Presidential Records Act, which requires that presidents keep records of their official business and turn them over at the end of their term, is unconstitutional. Gaiser clerked for Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito.
“The PRA is not a valid exercise of Congress’s Article I authority and unconstitutionally intrudes on the independence and autonomy of the President guaranteed by Article II. The Act establishes a permanent and burdensome regime of congressional regulation of the Presidency untethered from any valid and identifiable legislative purpose,” the memo reads. “For these reasons, the PRA is unconstitutional, and the President need not further comply with its dictates.”
(taking a moment to catch my breath)
We burden our elected president with the requirement that we know what he does and why he is doing it?
How can anyone believe this lunacy? Any person in a position of responsibility has to answer to his polity! Elected politicians all the more. He answers to us, the voters.
Our leader has a lot to answer for. We can’t trust anything he says, from minute to minute. Our treasury has been declared insolvent. He is sending our children off to war with unclear orders and insufficient leadership.
He has hired a confederacy of ignorant, greedy sycophants. He has gutted our diplomatic service. He has gutted Consumer Oversight. He has gutted the Environmental Protection Agency. He has corrupted the Department of Education.
He is terrified he cannot win and is attempting to take over national elections. Meanwhile, he is bankrupting our country with garish monuments and wars we never agreed to fight.
He is subjecting women to outdated standards and taken away their rights to make decisions for their own bodies.
He is corrupting our social system, taking medical care away from those who need it most, and callously neglecting the veterans who have served our country so loyally.
He has made agreements with other countries that we only learn about by accidental comments.
This can’t go on. Give us Accountability. Oversight. Congressional Approval. Fair and Free Elections. Constitutional Restraints!
Hope is Not a Strategy
Our leader has said other nations will come to escort ships through the Strait of Hormuz.
Trump last week first raised the idea of naval escorts for tankers in the strait “if necessary,” but on Monday, he hoped they wouldn’t be needed.
“When the time comes the U.S. Navy and its partners will escort tankers through the strait if needed. I hope it’s not going to be needed, but if it’s needed, we’ll escort them right through,” he said.
But even with Naval escorts, an expensive and time-consuming mission, it’s “not necessarily a guaranteed success,” according to Kirby.
“Drones can fly low and slow, they can fly fast and low, and they can do a lot of damage even to one ship with the Navy not being able to knock it out of the sky,” he said. (From TheHill.com)
And then this, from Associated Press:
“Many Countries, especially those who are affected by Iran’s attempted closure of the Hormuz Strait, will be sending War Ships, in conjunction with the United States of America, to keep the Strait open and safe,” Trump wrote on Saturday, later adding, “this should have always been a team effort.”
It was not clear if that multi-nation push was set to begin or if Trump only hoped it might, however. That’s because he also wrote: “Hopefully China, France, Japan, South Korea, the UK, and others, that are affected” will “send Ships to the area so that the Hormuz Strait will no longer” be threatened by Iran.
The normal route for declaring war is to communicate your intentions to your allies before you attack. It is to prepare and coordinate with your own national institutes before you attack. And, when you are going to seek assistance, it is a really good thing if you have not insulted your allies in numerous ways before asking for their help, especially when it involves great risking expensive ships, aircraft and lives.
“Hope” and “Hopefully” are not good substitutes for steady, consistent diplomatic relations and providing reliable, honorable leadership on the international level. This would-be war eagle has soiled his nest.
Unintended Consequences
It is rare that I am stunned into silence.
This is not the world I grew up in. This is not the country I served. These are not the values we were taught as children, in a United States full of post WWII optimism, as we allied with other nations for the greater good.
I am a blessed woman. I have what I need, and my son married a woman with deeply perceptive insights. An environmental specialist, she taught me the concept of Unanticipated Consequences. We are witnessing a host of unanticipated consequence unrolling by the minute, consequences which will have reverberations far into the future – not forseeable consequences but lasting.
Our current Administration is whacko. They command the mightiest military on earth, and they hold the keys to nuclear weapons. I have a friend who says “We’re Doomed,” only he uses a stronger, vulgar word I don’t want to use here.
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