Silver and Gold, Copper and Iron

 There is a mine for silver

    and a place where gold is refined.

 Iron is taken from the earth,

    and copper is smelted from ore. Job 28:1-2 (New International Version)

In my daily Bible reading, I have been plowing through the book of Job. Not a very upbeat book, is it? But I finally finished reading it last night and the last few chapters are much more upbeat.  

As I read the above verses a few weeks ago, I was once again amazed at how everything about this world is in the Bible. The precious metals that Job referred to were most likely somewhere in the Middle East, or at least somewhere in the settled world of that time.

However, since I still have Michigan’s Upper Peninsula on my brain, I can only picture iron and copper ore lying under those grounds and nowhere else.

But when Job was lamenting about the life he had been handed, God knew that there was copper in the ground in that peninsula that jutted out into Lake Superior. He knew there was iron in the ground a hundred miles south of there. He knew it, because He put it there.

He knew the Indians would find it and mine it. He knew that white settlers would find it as well and rush to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to try to get rich off of it. But He only put so much of it there and He made sure that it wasn’t easy to get to. He had everything planned from the beginning of time.

With all that Knowledge, you would think that God would get bored. What would it be like to Know everything? The thing is God can handle it and we can’t.  There’s a lot we can’t handle, which is why we need to put our trust in God.

Heavenly Father, thank You for all that You have given us, the beautiful and necessary as well as the hardships which are part of life. Thank You for knowing that everything will turn out as it was meant to. Amen.