February 9, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“For your ruined and desolate places and your ravaged land will now indeed be too small for your people, and those who devoured you will be far away. Yet the children of your bereavement will say in your hearing, ‘This place is too small for us; make room for us to live here.’” (Isaiah 49.19-20)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

We have no idea what God had in store for us and has in store for us. Even the glimmer of imaginings which God’s word provides to us about the New Heaven and the New Earth defy what we can from our worldly position conceive. We know of the efforts of kings and kingdoms, including those of our domestic attempts, to reflect such grandeur as authentic power and freedom can afford appear more poor than rich because they fade in time. We also know of the consequences of these efforts to grasp the wonder of the Kingdom of God on earth as it is in Heaven because we do so with human hands. The resulting frustrations and conflict, the angst and wearying determination to make of ourselves more than we ought, can often lead us astray where denying the truth of God and ourselves becomes our home and final destination. But this is not what God intended nor intends for those who are His people, those who call upon the name of the Lord to be their God.

This is what the prophet Isaiah was inspired to capture as God’s word was given to him for the hope of Israel. Their current condition bore witness to the failed efforts of “going it alone and on their own” as we reflected upon before. The decision to do so speaks more of a lack of trust and belief in God and more in the desire to say we are a god. Yes, we have the ability to choose our way in this world. This is a gift from God meant to illuminate our choice for spiritual freedom to be and to do what God intended for us and intends for us. Even in hardship, God’s way is a path through, as David called them, “the valley(s) of the shadow of death.” “In this world there will be trouble,” Jesus uttered this truth, it is a promise of sad reality, but not without the blessed caveat “but do not fear it, for I have overcome the world.” What did Jesus overcome? Was it not the fear of death, sacrifice and the question of will? Jesus knew: God’s will is not the death of anyone; God so loved the world that only His personal sacrifice could truly save it; God’s will would be accomplished whether we abide by it or not.

In the verses reflected upon today, Isaiah speaks of the unveiled reality of those who suffered, by choice or by default. That reality was the abundance of blessing so great what had been given in the past and thought great paled in the comparison of what was “already but not yet.” The already in chapter 49 was the return of the exiles to their promised land. It wasn’t about treasure, riches or the bounty of the earth. It was about the numbers of those who were returning, the unknown and forgotten generations whose increase was a sign of God’s desire and design. What was already at hand was insufficient to capture what was happening because of God’s favor. Remember in the days of Moses when the Land of Goshen was then the dwelling place of millions? It was not that way four hundred years previous. Then it was the dwelling place of a father and twelve sons with their families and belongings. One of those sons was a “prince of Egypt,” Joseph whom Jacob had thought was long dead. He was found by his brothers who sold him into exile to be abundant, prosperous, resplendent and kind. What was actually found was the fulfillment of the prophetic dreams given to Joseph who dared to believe in God in such a way. Now in the days of Moses, it was far more than even Pharaoh could imagine. His struggle against it proved to be his downfall. The goodness of God far surpassed the greatness of the god of Egypt. Would it be so once again for those who were experiencing a hundred years of Babylonian exile, both foreign and domestic?

And what of today? What is the liability and the asset of believing in the One True God of Heaven and earth? The liability is that we will be at odds with the world (that is, the human manifestation of community by non-kingdom standards). The world desires to satisfy itself by going “on its own and making its own way.” We see the results of that kind of thinking in the generations who rebelled at Sinai and again at Beersheba. Those who were not swallowed up for their idolatrous behavior at the mountain were left to die out in the wilderness. What is it that we see today? Some of the consequences we see on earth today and in the world are the effects of time itself. Our inability to grasp the truth of creation in its own cycle beyond even that of scientific exploration causes us to trust more in ourselves than surrendering to the will of God to provide, preserve and prosper. What then of those human trials and tribulations which are put upon others all in the hope of promoting one’s self, philosophy and politics? What is it that Jesus declared? “You will hear of wars and the rumors of wars and disasters but there are merely the birth pangs of what is yet to come.” What is yet to come? Wars and death as the liability. Life and the hope of life as the asset. But not without the intervention of God. His greatest intervention is Jesus Christ who is Lord and Savior whether we grasp it or declare it as truth. And for those who do, this earth will be too small to contain all that God had and has in store for those who are His people. And for those who are not? If we cannot fully imagine the New Heaven and the New Earth, then we cannot imagine those whose lives are bound to darkness and terror and their eternal dwelling place. Let us fully and faithfully pursue the one and leave behind the other in those valleys of the shadows of death.

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

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness which we know is folly but righteous works which declare Your glory and further witness the truth that can set all who believe free from death. So may we live by the name of Jesus our Christ. AMEN.