Thursday, December 26, 2013

The Lord's Comfort and Compassion

Jesus and the Just Reign of God
God Sends Jesus

Jesus is Presented in the Temple

Isaiah 49:8-13

The Message
8-12 God also says:
“When the time’s ripe, I answer you.
    When victory’s due, I help you.
I form you and use you
    to reconnect the people with me,
To put the land in order,
    to resettle families on the ruined properties.
I tell prisoners, ‘Come on out. You’re free!’
    and those huddled in fear, ‘It’s all right. It’s safe now.’
There’ll be foodstands along all the roads,
    picnics on all the hills—
Nobody hungry, nobody thirsty,
    shade from the sun, shelter from the wind,
For the Compassionate One guides them,
    takes them to the best springs.
I’ll make all my mountains into roads,
    turn them into a superhighway.
Look: These coming from far countries,
    and those, out of the north,
These streaming in from the west,
    and those from all the way down the Nile!”
13 Heavens, raise the roof! Earth, wake the dead!
    Mountains, send up cheers!
God has comforted his people.
    He has tenderly nursed his beaten-up, beaten-down people.


For Reflection
God forms you and uses you.  Have you ever wondered about how your life would have been different if?  What if my father, who was Catholic, would not have died when I was four years old? What if I were raised in some other house hold instead of with my mother and her two sisters?  What if I would have taken the HR or writer job that a friend of the family offered when I graduated from college?  What if I had not moved away from home?  What if?  What If?

Some of what happens in our lives is good.  Some is not so good.  God uses all of our experience, good and not so good,  to form who we can become.  All our potential value in God's plan is dependent upon our accepting God's call.  Have you become what God has intended you to become?  Are you fighting the core of who you really are with heavy fists of who you think you would rather be?  It would be easier if you gave in to God. 

Pray
that you will give into your God-self.  Pray for the courage to let God guide the rest of your life.  Pray for the comfort brought by an intimate relation with the Father.

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