Daily Lectionary

Job 10:1-22

¹ “I loathe my life; I will give free utterance to my complaint; I will speak in the bitterness of my soul.
² I will say to God, Do not condemn me; let me know why you contend against me.
³ Does it seem good to you to oppress, to despise the work of your hands and favor the designs of the wicked?
⁴ Have you eyes of flesh? Do you see as man sees?
⁵ Are your days as the days of man, or your years as a man’s years,
⁶ that you seek out my iniquity and search for my sin,
⁷ although you know that I am not guilty, and there is none to deliver out of your hand?
⁸ Your hands fashioned and made me, and now you have destroyed me altogether.
⁹ Remember that you have made me like clay; and will you return me to the dust?
¹⁰ Did you not pour me out like milk and curdle me like cheese?
¹¹ You clothed me with skin and flesh, and knit me together with bones and sinews.
¹² You have granted me life and steadfast love, and your care has preserved my spirit.
¹³ Yet these things you hid in your heart; I know that this was your purpose.
¹⁴ If I sin, you watch me and do not acquit me of my iniquity.
¹⁵ If I am guilty, woe to me! If I am in the right, I cannot lift up my head, for I am filled with disgrace and look on my affliction.
¹⁶ And were my head lifted up, you would hunt me like a lion and again work wonders against me.
¹⁷ You renew your witnesses against me and increase your vexation toward me; you bring fresh troops against me.
¹⁸ “Why did you bring me out from the womb? Would that I had died before any eye had seen me
¹⁹ and were as though I had not been, carried from the womb to the grave.
²⁰ Are not my days few? Then cease, and leave me alone, that I may find a little cheer
²¹ before I go—and I shall not return— to the land of darkness and deep shadow,
²² the land of gloom like thick darkness, like deep shadow without any order, where light is as thick darkness.” (ESV)

John 5:1-18

¹ After this there was a feast of the Jews, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
² Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, in Aramaic called Bethesda, which has five roofed colonnades.
³ In these lay a multitude of invalids—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
⁵ One man was there who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years.
⁶ When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to be healed?”
⁷ The sick man answered him, “Sir, I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, and while I am going another steps down before me.”
⁸ Jesus said to him, “Get up, take up your bed, and walk.”
⁹ And at once the man was healed, and he took up his bed and walked. Now that day was the Sabbath.
¹⁰ So the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “It is the Sabbath, and it is not lawful for you to take up your bed.”
¹¹ But he answered them, “The man who healed me, that man said to me, ‘Take up your bed, and walk.’”
¹² They asked him, “Who is the man who said to you, ‘Take up your bed and walk’?”
¹³ Now the man who had been healed did not know who it was, for Jesus had withdrawn, as there was a crowd in the place.
¹⁴ Afterward Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you.”
¹⁵ The man went away and told the Jews that it was Jesus who had healed him.
¹⁶ And this was why the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.
¹⁷ But Jesus answered them, “My Father is working until now, and I am working.”
¹⁸ This was why the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God. (ESV)