Then Zophar the Naamathite answered: ‘Should a multitude of words go unanswered, and should one full of talk be vindicated?Should your babble put others to silence, and when you mock, shall no one shame you?For you say, “My conduct is pure, and I am clean in God’s sight.”But O that God would speak, and open his lips to you,and […]
URC Daily Devotion 21st February
Then Job answered:‘Indeed I know that this is so; but how can a mortal be just before God?If one wished to contend with him, one could not answer him once in a thousand.He is wise in heart, and mighty in strength—who has resisted him, and succeeded?—he who removes mountains, and they do not know it, when he overturns […]
URC Daily Devotion 20th February
‘How long will you say these things, and the words of your mouth be a great wind?Does God pervert justice? Or does the Almighty pervert the right?If your children sinned against him, he delivered them into the power of their transgression.If you will seek God and make supplication to the Almighty,if you are pure and upright, surely then he will […]
URC Daily Devotions 19th February
Job isn’t persuaded and renews his lament, wishing that God will end his life because he isn’t sure how much more he can endure without sinning against God. The only point on which Job agrees with Eliphaz is that God is all powerful and free to act in whatever ways God chooses. He denounces his […]
URC Daily Devotion 17th February
Eliphaz feels obliged to speak, to reprove Job for his lament and initially his words are a gentle rebuke to a friend. He then voices one of the doctrines of traditional wisdom, as though this will comfort Job: that an innocent person has never suffered a premature death. It is hard to imagine that anyone […]
URC Daily Devotion 16th February
After this Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth. Job said: ‘Let the day perish on which I was born, and the night that said, “A man-child is conceived.”Let that day be darkness! May God above not seek it, or light shine on it.Let gloom and deep darkness claim it. Let clouds settle upon it; let the […]
URC Daily Devotions 15th February
One day the heavenly beings came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan also came among them to present himself before the Lord. The Lord said to Satan,‘Where have you come from?’ Satan answered the Lord, ‘From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.’ The Lord […]
URC Daily Devotion Ash Wednesday
There was once a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. That man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He had seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, five hundred yoke of oxen, five hundred donkeys, […]
Lent with Job
Dear <<First Name>> Lent starts tomorrow – traditionally a six week period of preparation for Easter marked, before the Reformation, by fasting from meat and dairy products – Orthodox Christians still do this. Many of us try and give something up for Lent, others try and take something up as a positive outworking of spirituality. During […]
Daily Devotion 12th February
Thomas Hemerford was an English Reformation martyr. A native of Dorset, he was educated at Oxford and then studied for the priesthood at English College in Rome. He was ordained in Rome in 1583, and returned to England, where he was swiftly arrested. Condemned for being a priest, he was hanged, drawn, and quartered at […]