Daily Devotion for Lent 2025, Day 13

Today's Reading: Job, Chapter Thirteen

Job opens up and gives as good as he gets to his friends.

He names them as "worthless physicians" as they have been no help at all!  Have you ever felt at times that you should have kept your mouth shut?  I think Job wishes that they would have followed this unheeded piece of wisdom.

He then goes on to tell them to act as God's court defenders if he could put God on trial.  It makes us consider, could I really be impartial if I were defending God?

If something is an act of God, we all jump to the conclusion that it must have been done for a reason that we cannot understand due to our limited sight.

We have historically called extreme weather acts of God.  I'm not sure if insurance still uses this terminology but I would classify these as mislabeled.  My defense would be the book of Job!

As a pastor, I've actually met with multiple families who have lost homes to tornado damage.  I didn't ask any of them what they had done to deserve such a punishment!  

That's a lot of sin to clean up!

At a previous appointment, when we had storm damage across our town, I noted that our church was unscathed while the Baptist church had some damage.  I guess we know which congregation God favors after all!

I said this with tongue firmly in-cheek as I know that some people still cling to this type of belief about God.  I also like to tease with the best of them!

Job helps us to avoid making these kinds of assumptions.  

As he prays, Job claims to God that you "make me reap the iniquities of my youth."  This kind of statement makes us recognize that no one wants to be held responsible for the things they may have done as teenagers.  So, we recognize that some grace must be involved with how God sees us!

If we would ask this kind of grace from God, it makes us recognize that we should also afford God grace for the calamity of the world.  Maybe these things aren't acts of God after all!

Prayer for the day:

While faith is with me, I am blest;

It turns my darkest night to day;

But, while I clasp it to my breast,

I often feel it slide away.

 

What shall I do if all my love,

My hopes, my toil, are cast away?

And if there be no God above

To hear and bless me when I pray?

 

Oh, help me, God!  For thou alone

Canst my distracted soul relieve.

Forsake it not: it is thine own,

Though weak, yet longing to believe.

Amen.

Prayer by Anne Brontë, England, 19^th century

Photo by Sheryl Heaton Powers, Moore, Oklahoma, June 4, 2013

New Revised Standard Version, Updated Edition. Copyright © 2021 National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.