Daily Devotion for Lent 2025, Day 20

Today's Reading: Job, Chapter Twenty

Zophar has a rebuke that Job may not disagree with in today's reading because Job doesn't count himself among the wicked.

This scathing review of the unjust takes the long view.  Basically, the evil people will perish and their deeds will be forgotten.

The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in a speech given on March 25, 1965 (sixty years and a couple of days ago) stated that injustice had become normal in our country.  In order to see some relief, some were asking, "How long will it take?"

And Dr. King began the famous litany of "How long?  Not long."  He stated with a similarity to Zophar's speech that "No lie can live forever" and "You shall reap what you sow."

And then one of my favorite quotes by Dr. King: "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

This is the long view.  It is a hopeful view.  It takes resolve because the injustice doesn't disappear today.  It takes community because we need one another to endure hardships.  But it also takes work on progress toward a goal.  

Dr. King's goal was this: "The only normalcy that we will settle for is the normalcy that recognizes the dignity and worth of all of God’s children."

With Job's situation, we recognize that there is always suffering even in the midst of working toward the goal.  Yes, the wicked will eventually perish but what does that do for the one distressed today?

Zophar is privileged in that he hasn't endured the same calamities that have befallen his friend.  And so, if he doesn't share with his friend who has suffered misfortune, does Zophar become the greedy person that he highlights?  

How do we use the times we are in good circumstances to lift the fortunes of those who are experiencing hard times?

Prayer for the day:

Behold, O Lord God, our strivings after a truer and more abiding order.  Give us visions that bring back a lost glory to the earth, and dreams that foreshadow the better order you have prepared for us.  Scatter every excuse of frailty and unworthiness.  Consecrate us all with a heavenly mission.  Open to us a clearer prospect of our work.  Give us strength according to our day gladly to welcome and gratefully to fulfill this goal, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Prayer by Brooke Foss Westcott, Church of England, 19th Century

Quotes by Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. from "How Long?  Not Long."

Photo by Unseen Histories on Unsplash