March 6, 2025

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“‘Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed, yet My unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor My covenant of peace be removed,’ says the Lord, who has compassion on you.” (Isaiah 54.10)

REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

Where Advent focuses on the cradle, Lent focuses on the cross. Both elements represent a change in the way we see the world in which we live. With them, God demonstrates how our image of “life in this world” is not what God imagined. In Bethlehem, in a cave used as a stall for animals, the Lamb of God was placed in a feeding trough as a manger. It is hardly the place that we would think of for the “birthplace of a king.” It is unexpected and not anticipated. Not even Mary and Joseph had this in mind when they left Nazareth and journeyed to Bethlehem. The hope was more likely that they would be welcomed into the home of one of Joseph’s kin. Still, in our mind, the birthplace of a king might stir images of palaces instead of inns, pristine rooms and not those which had been used by countless others. We may think of royalty and grandeur not humble and simple. We may cry out “This is not the way it was supposed to be!” But then, who are we to say how it was supposed to be? Eight miles away and thirty-three years later in Jerusalem, it would be another “rock” formation which would draw our eye to “what was not supposed to be.” On the place called Golgotha, The Skull, the one who was born “King of the Jews, the Son of David and the Son of God” was lashed and nailed to a roman cross and crucified. He died a horrible death having been beaten, bruised, stripped and whipped, spat upon and mocked and made to carry His own cross to the place where He would surrender His life only to be dependent on another to carry the cross for Him. Wearing a crown of thorns pressed into His flesh, spikes driven through His wrists and feet, flesh torn from His body exposing bone, tendon and vital organs, blood oozing and crusting on His worn out and exhausted body, Jesus died. What was meant as an emblem of suffering and shame, a warning to all those who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was King of kings and Lord of lords, was not what God would have preferred but what sadly served His will and purpose of redeeming His people back into the folds of His garment of mercy and grace. Who are we to say “what was meant to be”?

Ultimately, those images and the one presented in Isaiah 54, speak of the sovereignty of God over all creation but more importantly over those who would call upon the name of the Lord and trust in Him with their very lives. The images presented are meant to teach us that in all that “we” might imagine we cannot “unimagine” what God has done, is doing and will do to demonstrate so great a love as His. The challenge to our minds is the contrast of the image we may have of God and the image by which God presents Himself. Without question, life will be lived on God’s terms and in the way God imagined it when He first created the heavens and the earth. How we think life should be lived only matches what God purposes in the internals and not the externals. Hear what Isaiah declares of God’s word to him and the people of God called Israel: “Though the mountains be shaken and the hills be removed.” We might immediately think of earthquakes and colliding tectonic plates, bulldozers and explosive devices when the biblical image was and is declared. We may tend to think more of the geography of the words and not the figurative imagery they represent. “Mountains and hills” were watchwords for political and theological leadership. What Israel’s captors and enemies, Satan included, intended to do was to strip mine Israel of her leadership in the palace and in the Temple. Reducing Israel to “sheep without a shepherd” was to so humble a nation that it would surrender itself into the hands of captors. They would be caught like birds in a snare, animals in a trap and sheep in thickets. But God responds to that human condition (and to the resulting spiritual condition) with assurance saying, “…yet My unfailing love for you will not be shaken nor My covenant of peace be removed.”

Mighty ones of God, we would do well to hear the deep message which was spoken to Israel and speaks to us now. Grasp the images presented and find that peace which God has promised is ours. When the mountains and hills are shaken, there is still “solid rock.” Where was Jesus born? Not in a house made by human hands, but in the cleft of a rock used as a shelter for life and living. He was laid not in a manger made of wood as we so easily imagine but in the hollow of the rock used as a feeding trough. Where did Jesus die? Yes, He did on a man-made cross but the wood was pass away while the rock into which it was driven would “never pass away.” The place of “The Skull” remains while the cross of shame has long since decayed and return to ashes and dust. Even His burial place returns us to the image of His birthplace as He was laid in Joseph’s tomb. Placed on a shelf of stone, the body of Jesus was wrapped in burial “swaddling cloths” where He might rest. Though the images of king and kingdom, power and riches, those things which we see as immovable objects in our minds are reduced to what is truth. The words of Jesus recorded in Matthew 24.35 could be brought to mind here as they speak such truth, “The heavens and the earth and the things of them may pass away but My Word shall never pass away.” What is being said now is the echoing of God’s promise through the ages. His word of the promise of peace and prosperity will never pass away. His presence is always with us. Sometimes it may seem to act against us, but it is always for us. “All things can work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to His purposes.” (Romans 8.28)

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.