Daily Devotionals

Bowen's Daily Meditations

Devotional: February 19th

" Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him." - Job 13:15.

If we want a sublime utterance, here is one. Let us give glory to that Blessed Spirit of grace, who thus sometimes teaches the lips of man wondrous things.

Though he slay me, - not simply, though he take away my life. Job would have had no reluctance to part with his life. It would have been an inexpressible relief to him to escape from the load of misery laid upon him. The expression, " Though he slay me," is the strongest possible, and startles us with an exhibition of peculiar horrors. Though God should come against me, and destroy me with marks of signal wrath; though death should visit me as the king of terrors, and though my departure from this world should be in harmony with and as a mighty climax to my present agony ; yet will I trust in him. I believe his word, rather than the aspect of his providences. The fire that fell from heaven and destroyed my flocks, is not able to destroy the promise on which I rest. A great wind from the wilderness smote the house where all my loved ones dwelt, and at one swoop removed all in which I delighted on earth; yet the word of God endureth forever. I have a ground of confidence that cannot be shaken by elemental wrath. Though the floods should lift themselves against me, and every billow proclaim that God is my enemy; though streams of liquid fire should advance, declaring that God’s ancient love is extinguished; though the earth beneath should shake, and the heaven above be black; though all things should seem commissioned to preach unto me the unquenchable wrath of God; yet will I trust in his unalterable word.

The perfection of faith is to cling to the word of God, when all his works, and all his ways, seem to proclaim the very opposite of that word. Isaac no doubt had confidence in his father; and when he saw him with the knife in his uplifted hand, ready to slay him, still he trusted in him; nor would he have fled to any other earthly refuge. "He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." It was a terrible trial of the faith of Lazarus and his sisters, when they hearkened, hearkened, hearkened for footsteps of Jesus, and after all, those of death came first; but we may hope that the dying one passed away with something like the words of Job upon his lips.

-