The Gift of a New Year

Today, for our first post of the new year, I thought it appropriate to talk some about this new year that is in front of us. We have some 363 days ahead of us that are ours to be opened. It reminds me of Matthew 2:10-11, a passage you should have read recently:

“They were overjoyed at seeing the star, they saw the Child with Mary His mother. They opened their treasures and offered Him gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.”

If you can’t tell these verses are part of the Christmas story, they’re telling of the Wise men who have come to give gifts to baby Jesus. We’ve been given a gift of another year. Yes, I choose to see it that way. I know there are a lot of not so great things in this world, but there are also a lot of great things to be seen as well. But more than just that, you have to think about each day like you think about the electronic presents you may have gotten for Christmas this year. They don’t work very well if you don’t put the batteries in or plug them in, do they? Similarly, the gift of these days are meaningless if we don’t take the time to live each one to the fullest.

In 2023 we lost many great individuals, as we do each year. Some go seemingly before their time, and other times people go at ages we feel are more appropriate. Whenever we lose people we love or know or have been blessed in some way by, we’re reminded that each and every day is a gift and not something to be wasted. Isaiah 43:16, 18-19 says:

“I am the Lord, who opened a way through the waters, making a dry path through the sea. But forget all that it is nothing compared to what I am going to do. For I am about to do something new. See, I have already begun! Do you not see it? I will make a pathway through the wilderness. I will create rivers in the dry wasteland.”

I hope and pray that this year is the opportunity you’ve been waiting for. I hope it’s the year that we all stand up and become the people that God has created us to be. I pray its the year we finally open up to God and let Him show us the path we should be walking on and actually take His advice. I pray it’s the year that we stop surviving and start thriving. What will you make of this gift that is 2024?

Reality Reflection: the Gift of Easter

Today is Easter Sunday for a large portion of the world that celebrates Easter (the rest of those who celebrate Easter will celebrate next Sunday this year for Orthodox Easter). Easter is the second large holiday in the Christian world that we celebrate each year, alongside of Christmas. I find it hard to miss either of these holidays because even if you’re not Christian you can’t miss the huge displays in stores of seasonally appropriate merchandise including gift wrapping for Christmas and chocolate bunnies for Easter, plus lots of grocery store displays about what to serve on the holiday table.

But when it comes to these two holidays we see them a bit different. Christmas is always associated with gifts, from the gifts around the Christmas tree to the gift of the baby Jesus and gifts from the wisemen. Easter is different because of where it begins for many: Good Friday and the sad and horrifying events of Jesus’ betrayal, trial and death. So even though Easter itself is an extremely joyous event there’s still an attachment of sadness that comes along with it. So imagine my surprise when I was reading a devotion this week which talked about Easter being a gift too.

The more I thought about it, the more right I realized they were in seeing Easter as a gift. Easter is the gift of eternal life thanks to the sacrifice that God and Jesus made when Jesus died on the cross and came back to life again victoriously having conquered the grave. Easter is the gift of forgiveness of our sins. Easter also is the gift of wholeness and healing, with Jesus taking our place and punishment so that we don’t have to suffer it for eternity and so that we could someday once again be the person God originally created us to be: one with Him. Easter is the gift of reassurance that everything that Jesus said while He was alive, and many things that were said before His life, were and are true. That’s a pretty incredible bunch of gifts in my mind, and a whole lot to be thankful for as we celebrate this Easter.

“But He was pierced for our rebellion, crushed for our sins. He was beaten so we could be whole. He was whipped so we could be healed.” Isaiah 53:5

Ready to Soar

Today we’re looking at the last section of Isaiah 40 (if you missed any part of the journey you can start here). Although it’s bittersweet to reach the end, the great thing about the Bible (and other books) is that there’s no limit to the number of times you can read it. So just like we can go back to Psalm 23 whenever we need to, reread the Christmas story every year (even sometimes several times during the Christmas season), and tell the stories of Noah and Daniel again and again, we can revisit any part of the Bible whenever God prompts us. Let’s dive into what I think is the perfect way to wrap up this very special chapter:

“O Jacob, how can you say the Lord does not see your troubles? O Israel, how can you say God ignores your rights? Have you never heard? Have you never understood? The Lord is the everlasting God, the Creator of all the earth. He never grows weak or weary. No one can measure the depths of his understanding. He gives power to the weak and strength to the powerless. Even youths will become weak and tired, and young men will fall in exhaustion. But those who trust in the Lord will find new strength. They will soar high on wings like eagles. The will run and not grow weary. They will walk and not faint.” Isaiah 40:27-31

First off, this is a really great passage for the season of our lives that we find ourselves in. Even if life since 2020 hasn’t been really difficult for you, the unpredictability alone has been challenging. I know many people have questioned, not only during this period in our lives, but since the beginning of time and God no longer walked in the Garden of Eden with us and after the years that Jesus spent on earth if God was really paying attention to everything that went on. I know it seems hard to believe that He could keep track of everything and everyone when so many of us can’t even keep track of what day of the week it is let alone all of the things going on in our lives, and yet that’s exactly what this passage says: God never grows weary or weak, never tired or powerless, and has more knowledge and understanding than we could ever comprehend.

Isaiah 40 closes with a challenge to each of us who read it: will you choose to trust in God for not only the strength you need to get through today, but everything else as well for your present and future? If we’re able to choose to trust and do our best to live a life God would be proud of, not only will we have the strength to get through our challenges, but we’ll even have the opportunities to be blessed and thrive. Yes, I said opportunities, not a lifetime guarantee. I’m not a bird expert but I do know that as much as birds fly, they also build nests and stop and perch on branches. So Isaiah 40 isn’t wrong to say that those who trust in God will soar (or to use my word: thrive), but rather we sometimes forget that that doesn’t mean all the time.

So as we look ahead to the rest of this year and whatever may come beyond, maybe the question we should consider is not what comes next but: are you consistently tapping into God’s strength and wisdom to help you do the work He has called you to do on the way to wherever the highway of the Lord leading? There will be challenges on the way to that destination, sometimes we’ll even feel so lost that we’ll forget that we’re not alone, but time and again God will show up in exactly the ways we need Him to most, He will remind us of what we need reminding, and He will send opportunities our way to soar. What is God giving you strength to work on today?

Listen to the Word of God

Welcome back to our second to last week of looking at Isaiah 40 (if you’ve missed out on the journey so far you can start back at the beginning here). Like last week passage, this week’s reminds me of the book of Job starting in chapter 38 where God really lets Job have it over how little humans know about how big God is and the impact He has on our lives and the world we live in. Let’s take a look at Isaiah 40:21-26:

“Haven’t you heard? Don’t you understand? Are you deaf to the words of God—the words He gave before the world began? Are you so ignorant? God sits above the circle of the earth. The people below seem like grasshoppers to him! He spreads out the heavens like a curtain and makes His tent from them. He judges the great people of the world and brings them all to nothing. They hardly get started, barely taking root, when He blows on them and they wither. The wind carries them off like chaff. “To whom will you compare me? Who is my equal?” asks the Holy One. Look up into the heavens. Who created all the stars? He brings them out like an army, one after another, calling each by its name. Because of His great power and incomparable strength, not a single one is missing.”

There are two things I want to focus on in this passage, first with the first verse that God really takes us to task about how poorly we tend to listen. If you remember back all the way in the beginning of the Bible it says that God walked in the garden (Genesis 3:8-9). Why would God want to walk among His creations other than to listen and look and be present among them? If it’s something that God does, wouldn’t it benefit us if we did it too? And what about the two most important Commandments: love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind and love your neighbor as yourself (Mark 12:29-31), and all of the instructions that Jesus gives on relationships and what it means to share this world that God created? Even years before Jesus came God reminds us here how important it is to listen. I think we can do better about listening to what Jesus taught and living it out more consistently in our lives.

We’ve talked about impermanence or the temporary nature of life, which is certainly something this passage talks about again as verses 6-8 did, but this passage ends with a reminder that as powerful and eternal as God is, He’s the amazing God He is because He cares about each and every person, each and every animal and is aware of each and every flower that is blown away. It’s because He’s so strong, capable and powerful that He cares so much and doesn’t forget us or ignore us. He’s an amazing God because He shared that strength and capability with each of us too, which is both a blessing and a challenge to us, which ties our two points today together: even as capable as we are, we have to remember to listen to and obey God because He’s God.

So this week I encourage you to listen and trust. Listen to your heart, listen to the others in the world and most importantly listen to God. Trust in your strength, trust in the strength of others, but never let that overtake your trust in God.

In Awe of God

Today for week 4 of our exploration of Isaiah 40 we’re beginning a look at the second half of the passage, starting with some verses that remind me a lot of some of what’s in the book of Job (if you need to catch up, here are the previous posts: week one, week two, week three):

“Who else has held the oceans in his hand? Who has measured off the heavens with his fingers? Who else knows the weight of the earth or has weighed the mountains and hills on a scale? Who is able to advise the Spirit of the Lord? Who knows enough to give him advice or teach him? Has the Lord ever needed anyone’s advice? Does he need instruction about what is good? Did someone teach him what is right or show him the path of justice? No, for all the nations of the world are but a drop in the bucket. They are nothing more than dust on the scales. He picks up the whole earth as though it were a grain of sand. All the wood in Lebanon’s forests and all Lebanon’s animals would not be enough to make a burnt offering worthy of our God. The nations of the world are worth nothing to him. In his eyes they count for less than nothing—mere emptiness and froth. To whom can you compare God? What image can you find to resemble him? Can he be compared to an idol formed in a mold, overlaid with gold, and decorated with silver chains? Or if people are too poor for that, they might at least choose wood that won’t decay and a skilled craftsman to carve an image that won’t fall down!” Isaiah 40:12-20

Doesn’t that sound a lot like what God says to Job starting in chapter 38? If we’re looking at Isaiah 40 from the perspective that it’s a foundational chapter in the book, one that can almost tell the whole overarching story of God’s love for His people in one go, as important as it is for Isaiah to remind everyone of the hope that God promises for the future, the importance of making room for God in your life, and sharing about God with the world, it’s just as important to remind people exactly how capable God is. This section of Isaiah 40 brings us an important perspective of humility, something that especially in this age of technology we don’t always have a whole lot of in our lives. But being a foundational passage, Isaiah 40 reminds us that not only are we’re here because God wants us to be here, He’s absolutely capable of taking on any and all things that happen in our world, capable of more than any created idol ever could dream of trying to be or do.

But more than just humility, this passage reminds us to take a good look around not because we’re so small and play such a tiny part of God’s plan, but because we’re in an absolutely incredible world. When was the last time you really took a good look around and reminded yourself how big and beautiful and powerful the natural world around us is? Have you gone hiking and stood at the top of a mountain and seen the world spread out before you? Have you gone scuba diving and seen life teeming beneath the waves? Have you watched birds build a nest, lay eggs and raise their young to fly off one day? Have you watched a flower grow from a little green bud to a burst of color and fragrance? Have you witnessed how attentive a dog is to their owner and the highs and lows that person experiences? Have you walked among the redwoods and been amazed that they can be that big and yet there are little tiny ants that God made as well? Have you flown over a country and seen the changes of landscapes from deserts to beaches to lakes to mountains to grasslands?

There’s so much to appreciate about the world we live in and so much respect to give the God who created all of it. I encourage you to be open this week to seeing the intricacies, the power, the majesty, the teamwork, and the creativity of the world that we live in, including the people who God placed in it at this time with you and me.

A Good Day to Share Hope

Today we’re on our third week of looking at the Isaiah 40 passage (week one, week two), and diving into the words of verses 9-11, verses which again remind me why this is one of my absolute favorite chapters:

“O Zion, messenger of good news, shout from the mountaintops! Shout it louder, O Jerusalem. Shout, and do not be afraid. Tell the towns of Judah, “Your God is coming!” Yes, the Sovereign Lord is coming in power. He will rule with a powerful arm. See, He brings His reward with Him as He comes. He will feed His flock like a shepherd. He will carry the lambs in His arms, holding them close to His heart. He will gently lead the mother sheep with their young.”

I think it’s important that this passage starts with the reminder that we are to be brave messengers. We aren’t to be apologetic about the fact that we believe in God and want to share about the ways He has changed our lives and the lives of so many for thousands of years. And even though our world is so filled with loud noises and people who end up in the news too often with their big mouths and insensitive actions, there are also many who aren’t heard and don’t have a voice that can be heard. So we’re being encouraged to be that voice of honesty, hope, comfort and encouragement that is loud enough to be heard over everything else going on in their lives, yet resonates in a way that can touch our hearts and minds in this world that is so very different from the world of Isaiah’s time.

But much like Psalm 23, this part of Isaiah 40 reminds us that as big, loud and powerful as God is, part of that shows up in some really comforting, protective and gentle ways. With all that has gone on and continues to change in the world since 2020 arrived, yes of course we’d like some big powerful “fixes” but honestly they so rarely happen and what we really need at the moment is a great big hug and some reassurance that we’ll get through this without things getting as desperate and scary as the events that started in 1929 with the market crash followed by the Great Depression and eventually WW2. God isn’t just a conquering God, He feeds the hungry, comforts the sorrowful, heals minds and bodies, brings peace to the troubled, and is present when you just need someone to “sit” with you.

You may not have good news to shout today and you may not get that big win you’ve been working on, but it’s always a good day to share God’s message of hope and to experience that comfort and support God can give even when the world seems to be falling down around you.

Shout for God

Last week we started a series on one of my favorite chapters in the Bible: Isaiah 40. Today we’re looking at the next section of verses, 6-8:

“A voice said, “Shout!” I asked, “What should I shout?” “Shout that people are like the grass. Their beauty fades as quickly as the flowers in a field. The grass withers and the flowers fade beneath the breath of the Lord. And so it is with people. The grass withers and the flowers fade, but the word of our God stands forever.” Isaiah 40:6-8

Sometimes I think we do ourselves a disservice by not talking about the hard stuff more. It’s one of the many reasons why we found ourselves as a world so deeply impacted by the virus and pandemic: because we ignored the possibility that it could (and might even be likely) to happen. Honestly I’m surprised we haven’t experienced more than one every hundred years with as connected as we are as a world in this day and age. We also face something equally sad much more frequently, and that’s the death of people we love and people who have had an impact on our lives. Which brings me back to our passage for today and how very interesting it is that Isaiah is told to shout about how temporary life on earth is. God is saying: don’t hide from the fact that flowers fade, that beauty is lost, that our bodies break down and eventually, as the saying goes, dust returns to dust.

But when it comes to God, He always has the last word, the final answer and the final bit of hope. I’ve read about the story of Lazarus in several of my devotions recently, where Lazarus becomes sick, dies and is brought back to life by Jesus. As happened with other people throughout the Bible, including Jesus, they were definitely dead, and yet God decided to bring them back to life. Yes, those stories are few and far between, but they still happened. It’s not our job to assume God’s timing on things, it’s our job to read His Word and share that Word with others.

The last thought I want to reflect on today is that this verse speaks of confidence. Be confident about and in what you say. Be confident in living a life you can be proud of and isn’t wasted because life is fleeting. And be confident in God, in God’s place in your life, and in the Words that God has shared in the Bible and the words He continues to share through our prayer time, spiritual readings, and sermons we hear. And if God gives you a message to shout like Isaiah, be faithful to heed that calling. What is God sharing in your prayer time this week?

Make Way for God

One of my absolute favorite passages in the Bible is one that I recently discovered we haven’t spent a whole lot of time talking about: Isaiah 40. So with summer officially here I thought that it would be a good opportunity to dedicate the next 6 weeks to exploring this fascinating chapter. Today we begin with Isaiah 40:1-5:

“”Comfort, comfort my people,” says your God. “Speak tenderly to Jerusalem. Tell her that her sad days are gone and her sins are pardoned. Yes, the Lord has punished her twice over for all her sins.” Listen! It’s the voice of someone shouting, “Clear the way through the wilderness for the Lord! Make a straight highway through the wasteland for our God! Fill in the valleys, and level the mountains and hills. Straighten the curves, and smooth out the rough places. Then the glory of the Lord will be revealed, and all people will see it together. The Lord has spoken!””

If I’m honest I could probably write a bunch of posts on just these 5 verses because there are so many interesting tidbits of wisdom packed in and it’s just such a captivating way to start a chapter. So today I want to focus on what the overarching focus of these verses is: make way for God. What does this mean? It means exactly what it sounds like: clear space in your life for God to exist. It’s that simple and that complicated. It’s complicated because for most of us that means as much work as the passage makes it sound. Because while we do make room in our lives for God, whether that be a devotional or Bible reading each day (or each week), going to church weekly (or at least listening to one online), participating in a Bible study, or always having worship music on in your car, if we’re really making way for God we’ll probably be giving Him more than 10 minutes a day.

But this should not be a stressor to us, in fact, we should be encouraged that not only does God want to be part of our lives in such a big way, but He wants us to be part of the impact He makes on our world. Another big relief is found in the second verse where God shares that He has pardoned the sins of His people. While being forgiven of sins is an ongoing thing as long as we’re in this lifetime, this passage really speaks to the fact that God doesn’t believe in punishing people forever, and that once we’ve been forgiven we need to bring our focus back to helping clear a way for God to shine more in the lives of people in this world. And how do we do that? We do it with as much creativity as this passage suggests. We do it by building homes, teaching Sunday School, doing camps for kids, being there for people, praying with people, choosing love and patience over anger and gossip, supporting Bible translation organizations and missionaries, sharing blog posts and sermons with friends, retweeting Bible verses and spiritual wisdom on Twitter, holding bake sales and yard sales at churches, and hundreds of other big and little things that can not only introduce people to God but share what it means to truly be a person who has made room for God in their life.

Why? Because the ultimate goal is, as it says in verse 5, for God’s glory to be revealed and everyone to see it together. We don’t do a whole lot together these days, the pandemic being one of the most recent things that has brought us together as a world. Is seeing God’s glory together worth the effort? I know it will be amazing even if only some of us get to see it, but how much more awesome will it be when many more people see it because we’ve helped to make even more pathways for God in this world? Feeling overwhelmed or not sure where to start? Start with making room in your life for God: to listen to Him and let Him lead you and show to you how He wants you to help make a way in this world.

Reality Reflection: In Need of Encouragement

Sometimes you just need a little reassurance, encouragement and reminder that life isn’t just confusing, disappointing and hurtful, right? It’s one of the reasons I’m so thankful for my faith and having bits of encouragement in my inbox and Bible verses show up each day. It always amazes me that there’s so much of the world that we appreciate and understand and yet sometimes there are just moments, people, places and times that just don’t make sense either in a general sense or we just can’t relate because it’s so foreign to how we live. This holds true for the Bible as well, and is one of the reasons why some of the books in the Bible are read less often, because we just don’t live the way they lived then or have the same rules that they did then. But there’s a lot in the Bible that has held up through time and will continue to do so like Isaiah 41:10:

“Don’t be afraid, for I am with you. Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you. I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.”

This verse can be applied to so many aspects of our lives from our relationships to our work/financial situations to the world at large. Life over the past year has been more different than ever and there have been a ton of changes to deal with all at once. Being a year into all the challenges and changes and not having a whole lot of advancement is definitely discouraging, but then I think on how discouraging it must be for groups around the world who have faced genocide or are refugees, or even to one of the things we talk about this month, the history of African Americans and how they’ve been treated as second class citizens for hundreds of years and are still fighting that battle in many ways.

So yes, life can be pretty difficult. But if God hasn’t given up on us yet, we should not give up on each other and on continuing to give each day our best effort even if it sends us back to bed with a headache or heartache from time to time. And don’t be afraid to need encouragement or reassurance even daily that God is with you, because He wouldn’t have put other people or the Bible in our lives if He expected us to be totally confident all on our own.

Searching and Seeking

Discouragement is one of the challenges we have to face in life. It’s frustrating when we work so hard and it seems like the goal line just gets further and further away from us rather than closer to us. Or when we work really hard and put in the effort that’s supposed to get us there and it doesn’t seem like we’re making any progress. Sometimes it just seems like the answers are few and far between and the questions just keep piling up, or you can’t figure out the right question to ask to find the answers to your problems. Part of the challenge is that as long as we’re in this life we won’t get all the answers, some will remain with God and we’ll only have the answer when we get to Heaven. Which brings us back to where we started which is with discouragement and feeling disheartened. I don’t have all the answers, but I thought there were a couple of Bible verses that would encourage us as we do our seeking and searching:

“But may all who search for you be filled with joy and gladness in you. May those who love your salvation repeatedly shout, “The Lord is great!”” Psalm 40:16

“Seek the Kingdom of God above all else, and live righteously, and He will give you everything you need.” Matthew 6:33

“The humble will see their God at work and be glad. Let all who seek God’s help be encouraged.” Psalm 69:32

“Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.” Proverbs 3:6

“Seek the Lord while you can find Him. Call on Him now while He is near.” Isaiah 55:6

“Ask, and you will receive. Search, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened for you.” Matthew 7:7 (CEV)

I don’t know what you’re searching for this year, what you’re working towards, what you’re waiting for, but I encourage you not to give up. Maybe God will lead you down a different path than you thought would work or ask you to continue to be patient in how long it will take, or maybe God will give you a new dream to fulfill. But don’t give up on learning, talking with God, exploring His world, discovering the truth, and being open to the path that God has for you.