Verses from the Book of Job

It suddenly occurred to me that I had not done a blog about my "Book of Job" verses.
I have been reading Rowena  Loverance's book on Christian Art. She writes eloquently about this subject and has wonderful illustrations to back up what she is writing about.
There is a wonderful photo of a linocut by the Australian artist Eric Thake so her choices of art for this book are very wide ranging in both times and artists.
So Rowena inspired me to make a book about the verses in the book of Job.

I have always admired the illuminated scripts of the monks who would have sat in cold monastic spaces, on hard wooden seats, concentrating on doing the lettering in gold and vibrant pigments,
creating books for the Church in the Middle ages.
So I have tried to make the first letter of the verse look more important than the rest of my writing.

The verses I chose are worded in beautiful old English and they are so poetic and inspiring that they are inclined to make one feel humbled.
Who indeed are we? who can command the eagle to fly or anchor leviathan, that great sea creature we all admire and stand in awe of....
the description of the horse in all its glorious strength and beauty and its courageous facing of the enemy in days when it was asked to carry its soldier into battles in olden days, is stirring and humbling....when you think what enormous effect the horse had still, in the First World War,

only just 100 years ago and how many died in the service of mankind. It makes you want to weep. We used horses in the 1960ies for mustering sheep and cattle on the steep hills of  Hughes Park and they gave of their very best carting us up and down incredibly steep slopes.
Racing over stony ground to head a freshly shorn mob of wethers, bucking and kicking their way to a fresh paddock. Or galloping madly after a steer unwilling to go through the gate into the yard. The horses were shod every six to eight weeks

by our local blacksmith,  a short but wiry man who lived in Auburn. To start with I used to lead our horses over to the homestead blacksmith shop with its coal fired forge and all the tools of the trade hung in neat rows. Or is that my imagination that it was neat and not hung with dust of ages and cobwebs thick in the corners...
later the boys would be roped in and lead their pony as well.....
The cover of the book is fairisle knitting with  a mix of fine yarns and a card this time as the carriage of my electronic machine was sick and ill and away in a place to be repaired.....