Monday, May 18, 2026
Scripture Readings
- Primary Reading: Job 1-3
Key Verse
Job 2:9 — “Then said his wife unto him, Dost thou still retain thine integrity? curse God, and die.”
Devotional Thought
Some mornings we open the Scriptures looking for comfort, and instead we meet a man sitting in ashes. Job of Uz was the greatest of all the men of the east—seven thousand sheep, three thousand camels, ten children, a household large enough to be a small village. He was also, by God’s own testimony, perfect and upright, one that feared God and eschewed evil. If ever a man deserved a quiet life, it was Job. Yet in a single day he lost his oxen to the Sabeans, his sheep to fire from heaven, his camels to the Chaldeans, and all ten of his children to a wind out of the wilderness. Before the next scene closes, he is scraping his own boils with a potsherd among the ashes while his wife urges him to curse God and die.
What are we to do with a passage like this in the middle of May, when the world around us is greening and warm? Perhaps precisely this: the hedges God builds around His servants are not promises that no storm will ever come. Job himself had feared this very thing—”the thing which I greatly feared is come upon me.” His early-morning sacrifices for his children show a man who knew how fragile blessing is. And yet when the blows fell, he fell down and worshipped: “The LORD gave, and the LORD hath taken away; blessed be the name of the LORD.” He did not pretend the loss was small. Chapter 3 shows him cursing the day of his birth in raw, unvarnished anguish. Faith and grief are not enemies; they can live in the same heart.
Notice, too, that Job’s three friends did their best work before they said a word. They sat with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and none spake, for they saw that his grief was very great. It was only when they opened their mouths to explain God that they began to wound him. There is a ministry of silence that most of us are too restless to offer. When a neighbor’s marriage collapses, when a diagnosis comes back grim, when the grave opens too early, the truest kindness is often to sit down in the dust beside them and stay.
And behind the whole scene stands a mystery Job could not see: the conversation in heaven, the accuser’s sneer that Job feared God for nought, and God’s quiet confidence in His servant. Job never learned the reason for his suffering in this life. Neither, often, will we. What we are given is not an explanation but a God who is worthy of trust even when every earthly hedge is torn away. This week, someone near you may be sitting in ashes. Do not rush to explain. Sit down. And if you yourself are the one in ashes, know that the God who permitted the trial has not abandoned the throne.
Reflection
- Job’s friends sat with him in silence for seven days before speaking. Who in your life is grieving right now, and what would it look like for you to sit with them rather than explain their pain?
- Job blessed the name of the LORD even after losing nearly everything. Is there a loss in your own life that you have never brought honestly before God—either in lament or in worship?
Prayer
Lord, we confess that we love Your gifts more than we love You, and that we build our peace on hedges You never promised would stand forever. Teach us, like Job, to worship when the oxen and the children are taken. Give us grace to receive good and evil alike from Your hand without charging You foolishly. And when we sit beside the grieving, shut our mouths until our presence has done its quiet work. You are the God who sees what we cannot see, and You are worthy of trust even in the ashes. In the name of Jesus, who drank the cup of sorrow to its dregs for us, Amen.