the Fourth Week after Easter
Click here to join the effort!
Daily Devotionals
Day by Day Devotional - Year 5 of 5
James 5:7-20
Autumn is the season of hard work. Eight to ten months of successive cold and heat, rain and sunshine elapse before the new harvest is ripe. What patience the farmer needs! Like him let us be patient, "for the coming of the Lord draweth nigh". Let us also use the resources available to us: in times of gladness, singing; in trials (as indeed at all other times as well), the fervent prayer of faith. Do we ever discover what great things it can do ("availeth much" – cf. John 9:31 end)? Vv. 14-16, which are used to justify all sorts of practices in Christendom, are only true if all the conditions mentioned are kept. In any case a dependent Christian will not always feel free to ask for healing; he will rather pray with those around him for the peaceful acceptance of God’s will.
The end of the letter emphasises brotherly care in love: the confession of faults one to another (not of a believer to a priest), prayer one for another, care for those in need. Doctrine has little place in this letter. By contrast great emphasis is laid upon putting our Christianity into practice. May God grant that each one of us be "not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work" (James 1:25).
