The Wartburg Project

Daily Lectionary

May 31, 2024

May 30, 2024 June 1, 2024

These daily readings from the EHV follow the one-year daily lectionary provided in Christian Worship: Hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book, and the Treasury of Daily Prayer. In this lectionary, two readings of 15-25 verses each are provided for each day. Under this plan, nearly all of the New Testament and approximately one-third of the Old Testament are read each year. These readings fit well within the daily offices of Matins, Vespers, or Compline as daily family devotions.

Ecclesiastes 8:1-17

81Who is such a wise man? And who knows how to explain a situation? A man's wisdom makes his face shine and softens the hard look on his face.
2Obey the king's command[] because of your oath before God.[] 3Do not quickly leave his presence. Do not stand up for[] a bad cause, for he will do whatever he pleases. 4For a king's word is supreme, and who will say to him, “What are you doing?”
5Whoever obeys a command will experience no harm, and a wise heart will know the right time and the right way to act, 6because for each situation there is a right time and a right way to act, although evil may weigh a man down. 7But no one knows what will be. Indeed, who can tell him what will be?[]
8As no one has power to restrain the wind, there is no power over the day of death. No discharge is granted during war, and wickedness will not deliver those who practice it.
Life Is Not Fair
9All this I saw, while I was applying my heart to every work done under the sun, during this time when one man has power over another to harm him.[] 10While doing this, I have seen wicked people buried. They had come and gone from the holy place, and they were praised[] in the city where they had done so! This too is vapor.
11When the sentence for a crime is not carried out quickly, people's hearts are emboldened to do evil.
12Though a sinner commits a hundred crimes and lives for a long time,[] I nevertheless know that it will turn out well for those who fear God, who stand in awe before him. 13But it will not be good for the wicked. Such a man will not lengthen his days like a shadow, since he does not stand in fear before God.
14Another example of vapor that appears on the earth is when righteous people get what the wicked deserve for their actions, and wicked people get what the righteous deserve for their actions. I said, “This too is vapor.”
15So I sang the praises of pleasure, because there is nothing better for a person under the sun than to eat, drink, and enjoy life. Such joy will stay with him during his hard work, throughout the days of his life which God has given him under the sun.
16When I applied my heart to know wisdom and to observe the tiresome business done on the earth (even though it keeps a person from sleeping day or night), 17I saw everything that God has done, but no man can grasp all the work that is done under the sun. No matter how hard a man works to explore it, he cannot discover it all. Even if the wise man claims to know it, he cannot find it.

John 9:1-23

A Blind Man Sees
91As Jesus was passing by, he saw a man blind from birth. 2His disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?”
3Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that God's works might be revealed in connection with him. 4I[] must do the works of him who sent me while it is day. Night is coming when no one can work. 5As long as I am in the world, I am the Light of the World.”
6After saying this, Jesus spit on the ground, made some mud with the saliva, and spread the mud on the man's eyes. 7“Go,” Jesus told him, “wash in the pool of Siloam” (which means “Sent”). So he went and washed, and came back seeing.
8His neighbors and those who had seen him before this as a beggar asked, “Isn't this the one who used to sit and beg?”
9Some said, “He is the one.” Others said, “No, but he looks like him.” He kept saying, “I am the one!”
10So they asked him, “How were your eyes opened?”
11He answered, “The man who is called Jesus made mud, spread it on my eyes, and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ So I went and washed, and then I could see.”
12“Where is he?” they asked.
“I don't know,” he said.
13They brought this man who had been blind to the Pharisees. 14Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. 15So the Pharisees also asked him how he received his sight.
“He put mud on my eyes,” the man told them. “I washed, and now I see.”
16Then some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God because he does not keep the Sabbath.” Others were saying, “How can a sinful man work such miraculous signs?”
There was division among them, 17so they said to the blind man again, “What do you say about him, because he opened your eyes?”
The man replied, “He is a prophet.”
18The Jews still did not believe that he had been blind and received his sight, until they summoned the parents of the man who had received his sight. 19They asked them, “Is this your son, the one you say was born blind? How is it, then, that he can see now?”
20“We know that this is our son,” his parents answered, “and that he was born blind. 21But we do not know how he can see now, or who opened his eyes. Ask him. He is old enough. He will speak for himself.” 22His parents said these things because they were afraid of the Jews. For the Jews had already agreed that anyone who confessed that Jesus was the Christ would be put out of the synagogue. 23That is why his parents said, “He is old enough. Ask him.”