January 7, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“Thus says the LORD, your Redeemer who formed you from the womb: ‘I am the LORD, who has made all things, who alone stretched out the heavens, who by Myself spread out the earth.’” (Isaiah 44.24)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Let us not ignore the vital parallel between Genesis 1.1 and John 1.1.

“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.“

“In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God; the Word was God.“

The reality of these verses (and we can include Genesis 2.4) is that God existed conceptually before anything became a tangible reality. This is the process of life. Human beings have this tendency to see the tangible and then attempt to get to the concept behind it. It is the process of discover, to be sure. It is not the process of creation. God thought about what was to happen and then made it happen. We attempt to think about what has happened and make it unhappen. If you don’t think this is true, then hear again a very popular phrasing which is used in contemporary times when a turn for the worse happens. That phrasing espouses “I long for the good old days.” We frame that past reference with the tangible pleasure of it. Do we stop to consider the concept of what made that time pleasurable and if it was objectively conceived? Were there issues at hand in that time which we simply ignored or, more likely, had no knowledge of? Were there concepts already at work in those “good times” which were the birthing of the things we don’t like about today? Was there a “word” at work then which should have been heeded but was dismissed? This is what Isaiah presents to the leadership and people of the world. It is not merely Israel that God was giving the “word” to. We will read in verse 28 of Cyrus the Mede who was directed to restore and rebuild Israel, Jerusalem and the Temple. He was not Jewish. God did see him as a servant of His “word.” In the many twists and turns of redeeming Israel, God would use any resource necessary. The God of the beginning is also the God of the ending and the journey between the two points.

God is the inescapable reality. He is the concept (the Word) and the tangible (the Word made flesh.) We can see it not only in Jesus Christ but in ourselves. God is with us. God is in us. Grasping that truth changes everything.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, before we were conceived in the womb, You had already formed us in Your love and by Your Spirit brought us into being. Each one of us is blessed with the opportunity of doing right, being good and producing the fruit of the Spirit in order that others be fed the truth of that same love so that the two will become one. It is our soul’s sincere desire to embrace the oneness You have in mind so we would know we are Your people and You are our God. Lead us in that discovery of the truth and the manifestation of that love for us all. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.