Cotter’s Saturday Night + Household Worship Guide Job 19
This week we will consider Knowing that my Redeemer Lives and True Friends in Job 19. At Springs Reformed, we shifted the 3 days preparing for the Lord's Day coming a day early, so the Thursday - Saturday links below actually point to Wednesday - Friday.
Thursday Job 19:1-12—You Have Wronged Me. God Has Wronged Me.
Friday Job 19:13-22—With Friends Like These …
Saturday Job 19:23-29— I Know that My Redeemer Lives
Lord’s Day
Monday John 9:1–12—Who Sinned? This Man or His Parents?
Tuesday 1 Corinthians 15:50-58—Victory Through Our Lord Jesus Christ
Wednesday John 15:9–17—The Greatest Friend
If you find it useful to use these in your household/family worship, consider asking your pastor to speak to me about him developing something similar in your congregation.
Thoughts for Pastors:
James Alexander quotes and comments on the poem by Robert Burns, Cotter’s Saturday Night written in 1785-1786. “This poem relates how the Cotter (a poor peasant who was given the use of a Cot or Cottage by the property owner in exchange for labour as opposed to paying rent) and his family take time to relax on a Saturday evening after their week's labour, knowing that Sunday is a day of rest.”[1] Included in their relaxation and preparation for the Sabbath Day, household worship is presented as a normal happening in the Scottish home. The poem begins this way:
The cheerful supper done, with serious face,
They, round the fire, form a circle wide;
The sire turns over, with patriarchal grace,
The big hall-Bible, once his father's pride.
His bonnet reverently is laid aside,
His grey side-locks wearing thin and bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He selects a portion with judicious care,
And ‘Let us worship God!’ he says, with solemn air
They chant their artless notes in simple manner,
They tune their hearts, by far the noblest aim;
Perhaps Dundee's wild-warbling measures rise,
Or plaintive Martyrs, worthy of the name;
Or noble Elgin beets the heaven-ward flame,
The sweetest far of Scotia's holy lyrics:
Compared with these, Italian trills are tame;
The tickled ears no heart-felt raptures raise;
No unison have they, with our Creator's praise..
Sadly, it seems, Scotland, and even Burns himself, did not take the value of this practice to heart. Current news articles state that “Scotland is a pretty godless country. Recent polling shows most Scots are non-religious.”[2] This decline, it seems, is recent, with Fraser Sutherland, chief executive of the Humanist Society Scotland, stating, “Go back to the 1950s and Scotland was by far the most Christian part of Britain. Then there was this real decline since the 1960s.”[3] While cause and effect for such a decline is difficult to prove, it is not a stretch to assume that at some points over the previous 240 or so years a decline in household worship accompanied a decline in practiced Christianity throughout the nation of Scotland.
From Scotland, the practice of household worship continued in America. However the decline of Christianity in Scotland is matched by a similar decline in America and Great Britain. Helopoulos laments that “we have not only stopped doing it, but we have stopped talking about it. …This glorious expression of our Christian faith used to mark Christian homes, but over the past one hundred years, the evangelical church seems to have forgotten about it. … [may] our Christian homes once again be filled with fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, children, sisters, and brothers that are worshiping to the glory of God.”[4] This lamentable decline calls loudly for a renewal of the practice of household worship. Considering the rise and fall of the practice of household worship post-Reformation to present in the United Kingdom and in America is a sobering reminder of the great need of reviving the practice of household worship today.
[1] “Robert Burns Poem, ‘A Cotter’s Saturday Night.,’” accessed October 3, 2024, http://www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/cotters_saturday_night.htm.
[2] “Faith and Politics: What Is the Role of Religion in Modern Scotland? | The Herald,” accessed October 7, 2024, https://www.heraldscotland.com/politics/23363631.faith-politics-role-religion-modern-scotland/.
[3] “Faith and Politics: What Is the Role of Religion in Modern Scotland? | The Herald.”
[4] Helopoulos, A Neglected Grace, 14.
