Daily Reading: 11 October

(from www.christianaid.org.uk)

Give us courage to receive the gifts of others.

Something to read

My spirit is broken, my days are extinct, the grave is ready for me ... He has made me a byword of the peoples, and I am one before whom people spit.

- Job 17:1, 6.

Something to think about

Job was an object of pity and of charity for his friends. They felt it their role to support him and to give him the benefit of their wisdom.

Job is all too aware of how fragile and vulnerable he was.

And yet at the end of the book it is Job who is proven to be wise, and his friends are rebuked for misrepresenting God and not listening to Job (Job 42:8-9).

Perhaps this is not surprising for those who follow the one who was ‘despised and rejected by others’ (Isaiah 53:3).

Something to do

As a supporter of Christian Aid, think about your attitude to those we seek to support and assist. Are they simply objects of pity and charity? What might they have to teach you about God?

Something to pray

Jesus, friend of the poor,

save us from pride that thinks we have so much to offer others.

Give us courage to be vulnerable and to receive the gifts that others bring to us.

Amen.

Peter McDowell is a lecturer in Missiology with Practical Theology at Belfast Bible College. Previously he has been a minister in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and worked in Nepal.