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Job 36:20-21
20 Desire [sha'aph] not the night [layil], when people [`am] are cut off [`alah] in their place.
21 Take heed [shamar], regard [panah] not iniquity ['aven]: for this hast thou chosen [bachar] rather than affliction [`oniy]. KJV-Interlinear
20 'Do not long for the night, When people vanish in their place. 21 'Be careful, do not turn to evil; For you have preferred this to affliction. NASB
The night, is a reference to a life without truth, or a life following a pattern of compromised truth.
The vanishing, is an evaporation, a fading, a desertion, a departure, a disappearance of ones true life. The life intended for you, by God.
While you stand, while you live and breathe, and simultaneously pursue your own course, a course based on the deceptions of the world, then you will lose out on the life designed by God. It evaporates right before your eyes, but you cannot see it fading. All you see are the illusions of your own beliefs.
And why? Because you pursue the evils of the world rather than the afflictions of Gods reminders.
No one wants difficulties. That's for sure. But then difficulties are good teaching aids, reminders, course correctors.
Anyone who has ever traveled by car, by ship, by airplane, knows that during the long trip, your course needs occasional correction. We use maps, compasses, GPS tools and such things to help us stay on the correct course. Without a map, without a compass, without a tool of some type, then finding a destination, a destination that we have never been to, would be impossible to reach.
And none of us have been to the end of our life, our final destination in this world. None of us have been to the next life, our next destination after this life. A map and good directions would be a good thing to have.
The world provides lots of maps and lots of directions. God provides the only correct one. Sorting them all out is the problem. The world is full of enticements and shortcuts, even instant gratifications, which are hard to turn away from.
But God provides course correction incentives, afflictions, which give us some clarity and discernment.
But those who prefer the evil, the darkness of the world, will never listen to Gods corrective measures. And they will never see their own life vanishing right before their own eyes.
