Dinked By God

I've been reading Job lately. It has come up in my daily reading. It also dovetails with what I'm going through personally. (Caveat...while I've lost my livelihood, I still have my family, some money and better health than Job!) Even my counselor mentioned the connection. He called it...

"Being dinked by God."

And I didn't like hearing that. The God of love is now dinking with me? What the hell for!! I need to be dinked with ? What about all the others out there who really need to be dinked with?!! (Politicians, lawyers, terrorists and welfare-cheats come to mind!) What did I do to deserve such treatment? I mean, I was pissed!

Then he said something that confused me, pissed me off more and made me stop and think.

He's dinking me because He loves me.


For some of you this is a conundrum. An oxymoron. But it is a common theme in the Bible. Not just Job. Think of Peter. Thrice denying Christ after being told he would. Jonah and the first submarine ride. Jacob working 7 years for Rachel only to get Leah. Joseph being sold into slavery. (And what good Jews his brothers were..."No! Don't kill him. We can make few bucks selling him to this traveling caravan!") Jesus saying that you had to deny yourself, take up your cross daily and follow Him to experience the good news. Paul, beaten 39 times three times, shipwrecked twice, stoned, jailed and left at sea for a day and a night. And he was the one God said, "you shall take the good news to the gentiles and I will protect you."


He's dinking me because He loves me.

And wants me to be something else, something better. And my counselor seems to think that God ain't done dinking with me yet. Severe turbulence penetration, termination from my job, PTSD, and rejected for unemployment all seem to be the latest means of dinkage from God.

I can look back throughout my life and see the hand of God's dinkage all along.

And it still pisses me off.

(I'm working on that attitude...really...I am.)

But I'm accepting it more each day. It's not easy (which also pisses me off) and it's not fun (which also...you get the idea). But it is needed.

I thought about it. The way God has been treating me. The way He uses it to make me grow. After my initial, "That's totally not fair" I realized I was doing the same thing to my own son. To make him better, stronger, more able to survive in the world. And I realized that my own Dad did it to me to make me better, stronger, more able to survive in the world.

I have to move beyond the anger and see what God is doing. And frankly, I can't see shit. Maybe the blinders are on. Maybe the anger is coloring things. Maybe the despair has bogged me down. Or maybe I'm in the fog for a reason and I need to trust that I will break out in time to see the lights and make a safe landing.

Eric