Job 38: 1-41

New Resources

  • Ordinary 29B (2021)

    by Timothy Adkins-Jones
  • Proper 7B (2021)

    by Brennan Breed
  • Questions from God

    by Bob Cornwall
  • Proper 7B (2021)

    by Phil Heinze
  • Sermon Starters (Proper 24B)(2021)

    by Scott Hoezee
    Recently the New York Times spotlighted a remote, uninhabited island near India that is the only known home on the planet for the Narcondam Hornbill. This magnificent bird has rarely been seen by any humans and only a handful of scientists have ever seen this bird on the densely forested island the bird calls home. Sometimes some people respond to news of endangered species with a bit of a shrug. Why should we care about some remote species that we never see and that contributes nothing we can discern to human life? Well, for Christians the answer is “Because God cares, that’s why.” Because you just know that if God could revise his own Word in Job 38-41, he’d add the Narcondam Hornbill to his list of splendors in which he takes regular delight.
  • Do You Not Care?

    by Anne Le Bas
    The poet Raymond Carver, who struggled most of his life with alcoholism, which caused immense pain to him and those around him, eventually managed to stop drinking and find some measure of peace and wholeness late in his short life - he died at the age of 50. But the epitaph he wrote for his gravestone, the final poem, Late Fragment, in his final collection, says this. And did you get what you wanted from this life, even so? I did. And what did you want? To call myself beloved, to feel myself beloved on the earth...
  • Proper 7B (2021)

    by Janette Platter
  • Proper 24B (2021)

    by Henry T.C. Sun
  • The Unknowable

    by Debie Thomas
  • It's Bigger Than You

    by Todd Weir
    When we arrived at the home of people we knew, church members were already there with staple guns and plastic covering the shattered windows from the wind and the rain. Some were cleaning up the house, and I was sent with a group to rescue a terrified herd of cattle stampeding through the fields. Our youth group spent a week picking up debris in the fields to be replanted. It was one of the best experiences of community in my life. I later came across a book by Rebecca Solnit titled, “A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster.” Solnit writes about five disasters in-depth, such as the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco, the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, and Hurricane Katrina. She was fascinated by the stories of compassion, bravery, and community action that were far more powerful than reports of looting or selfishness. Solnit said, “Our response to disaster gives us nothing less than a glimpse of who else we ourselves may be and what else our society could become.”...

Illustrated Resources from the Archives

  • Power and Glory

    by Christina Berry
    ("Max Lucado elegantly sets God’s power and glory Next to our feeble efforts. Speaking in the voice of God, Like the writer of the book of Job, Lucado writes: I've seen you stalking the malls, walking the aisles, searching for that extra-special gift. Stashing away a few dollars a month to buy him some lizard-skin boots; staring at a thousand rings to find her the best diamond...")
  • The Journey

    by Thomas Lane Butts
    ("Charles Haddon Spurgeon was a famous 19th century English minister. As a young person, he had a lot of spiritual problems. His mind was filled with doubts which seemed to stand between him and a meaningful relationship with God..." and other illustrations)
  • Out of the Whirlwind

    by Rob Elder
    Yale professor Nicholas Wolterstorff’s son one day fell to his death on the side of a mountain. I cannot imagine an answer that could provide a satisfying response to the inevitable “why” question about the suffering this father must have endured. Yet, as he went through that experience and its aftermath, Professor Wolterstorff wrote, “I shall look at the world through tears. Perhaps I shall see things that dry-eyed I could not.”...
  • Where Were You?

    by Joe Evans
    Back in 2013, researchers from Boston College analyzed data from a long-term study called the Longitudinal Study of Generations. The study gathered data from 376 grandparents and 340 grandchildren, and concluded that "an emotionally close grandparent-adult grandchild relationship was associated with fewer symptoms of depression for both generations. The greater emotional support grandparents and adult grandchildren received from one another, the better their psychological health."...
  • Fundamental Wildness

    by Anna Gilcher
    ("I am going to read a long passage from Jerry May's last book, written as he was dying. I lie awake for a long time, sleepy yet energized by fear. I realize the fear is just happening, all by itself. Nothing is scaring me. It's not that I have an idea about what might be of danger and then become afraid of it...")
  • Proper 24B (2009)

    by Scott Hoezee
    ("Some years ago when Neal Plantinga opened his book on sin Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin, he directed readers' attention to the movie Grand Canyon. As some of you know, mostly that is a movie that pummels viewers with images of urban chaos, evil, and mayhem. Gangs of thugs roam the streets of Los Angeles....")
  • Preaching Helps (Proper 24B)(2018)

    by Stan Mast
    The indignant modern response to the message of God’s absolute sovereignty in the book of Job reminded me of a poem by Judith Viorst, in which a child dreams of being in charge of the world and making it a very different place. If I were in charge of the world I’d cancel oatmeal, Monday mornings, Allergy shots, and also Sara Steinberg. If I were in charge of the world There’d be brighter night lights, Healthier hamsters, and Basketball baskets forty eight inches lower. If I were in charge of the world You wouldn’t have lonely You wouldn’t have clean You wouldn’t have bedtime Or, ‘Don’t punch your sister.” You wouldn’t even have sisters. If I were in charge of the world A chocolate sundae with whipped cream would be a vegetable All 007 movies would be G, And a person who sometimes forgot to brush, And sometimes forgot to flush Would still be allowed to be In charge of the world.
  • Living the Christian Life

    by James McCrea
    ("Some years ago, a pastor shared a powerful true story on the internet of something that happened in his congregation. 'One of the young couples in his church had a baby boy who was born with all his intestines outside his body. He underwent surgery to correct that, but in the process the little boy's liver was damaged..." and other moving illustrations)
  • When You're Good to Mama

    by Nancy Nichols
    ("Perhaps the best part of the Flapper era movie Chicago is when Warden Mrs. Morton, beautifully portrayed by Queen Latifah, bumps and grinds her way through the song . Although she is singing about the favors given to her by the residents of the Cook County jail, she might just as well be singing about James and John, and anyone else for that matter...")
  • Pain's End

    by Stephen Schuette
    ("At our clergy conversation around these texts a friend suggested the book Hurt People Hurt People by Sandra Wilson. The thesis is that the pain we inflict has its source in the pain that we've received. Not knowing what else to do with it, and since it needs to go somewhere, we pass it on in a never-ending cycle...")
  • Why Do Bad Things Happen to Good People?

    by David Russell
    Dion Green lives in Dayton, Ohio. His world has been turned upside down. In May, the Ku Klux Klan came to town, spewing hatred directed at people like Dion. Counter-protesters dwarfed those there for the Klan rally, but such open hatred was shocking. Later that same week, Dayton was hit by a total of 12 devastating tornadoes. One came right through Dion’s neighborhood, tearing the roof off of his house. Blue tarps cover roofs and missing siding on houses not yet repaired. Pieces of insulation from a neighborhood school are still on Dion’s property, and his house is not yet completely repaired. Two weeks ago, another disaster struck. This was the kind that cannot be fixed. Dion’s family was celebrating a birthday when a gunman appeared and shots were fired. Dion’s fiancé tried to run but fell. So she played dead as the shooter stepped over her. A bullet hit Dion’s father. Dion, who had been getting tacos just a few feet away, held his father until he died. In his grieving, Green said he wondered what he and his city did to deserve this. “I have questions for the person up above,” he said...
  • Movies/Scenes Representing Judgment

    Compiled by Jenee Woodard

Resources from 2018 to 2020

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Resources from 2015 to 2017

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Resources from 2012 to 2014

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Resources from 2009 to 2011

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Resources from the Archives

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Children's Resources and Dramas