For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    The actions of the wicked expose them to dangers and obstacles. If you desire a long life you will avoid them and their plans. Show your children the right way to live when they are young and they will live their entire lives that way.

    I really needed to read both the NLT and the NIV translations of this psalm in order to get a fully formed idea of what it meant to me today. Those who are kind to the poor and help the weak will be blessed by God. God will protect them and people will see them as the justly blessed. Even if we have sinned against God, He will forgive us and bless us when we turn to Him and help the poor and weak.

    Paul starts out today’s passage by stressing that there is no need, and no benefit, to read between the lines of what he writes. He did not write his letters intending to convey a hidden message, nor did he intend to write something that went over their heads. He was confident that they could, and would, understand what he wrote.
    Paul then addresses the issue of what to do about the man about whom he had written in the previous letter. In the first letter Paul had told the Corinthian believers that they should cast the man out of their company for his sins. In this passage, he tells them that now that the man has repented of his sins, the Church should forgive him and welcome him back. This is an important second part to Church discipline. We need to be ready and eager to forgive and welcome back those who have repented of their sins. In the previous letter the key problem was the failure to recognize that their was anything wrong with sinful behavior. Here the key is the willingness to admit that his actions were wrong and seeking forgiveness.

    I always struggle when I get to this point in Job because the arguments from both sides have run their course. Job’s friends insist that he must be guilty of some heinous sin. Job insists that he is not. In today’s passage, Job agrees with his friends that God will judge the wicked, even if it sometimes seems as if they suffer no harm. Job points out that everyone dies, but the wicked have no hope, no comfort, when their fate befalls them. The righteous, on the other hand, can take comfort from God, even in their suffering.