Compassion

Isaiah 49:8-16 presents a moving portrayal of God’s compassion for us.  It contains one of those rare occasions in the Bible where God is spoken of in a typically motherly rather than typically fatherly metaphor.  When God’s people said, “The Lord has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me” (49:14), the response came, “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne?” (49:15).  This was a powerful message in Isaiah’s time when God’s people went through the pain of devastation during war and deportation to Babylon, and it still is a powerful message to everyone who experience the helplessness of hopeless situations that seem to have no solution or positive outcome.  Isaiah piles on verbs to reassure God’s people that God’s power and protection remains with them regardless the apparent abandoned and forsaken circumstances.  This is God’s ultimate promise that you and I live by today and in every possible circumstance, namely that “the Lord comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones” (49:13).  Therefore, the Lord has “engraved you on the palms of my (his) hands” (49:16).  In what regard do you have to not only hear this message today, but also believe it with all your heart?

God makes everything new

“I am making everything new,” says the Lord in Revelation 21:5.  God is “the spring of the water of life” in the midst of thirstiness (21:6).  It is exactly because of God’s ability to surprise with newness in the midst of barrenness that the writer of Revelation sees a new Jerusalem where we can now only see the devastation of the old.  Unless, of course, we look with eyes of faith…  Then we can see a reality in anticipation of God making things new.  Are you able to patiently wait on the Lord… with expectation that He will make things new in your life?  Are you able to look at a world of war, violence, corruption, deceit with eyes of faith that anticipate God to make everything new?