When love comes down: Connecting to joy

Merry Christmas! We hope you are finding the power and hope of this season! Do you ever feel drained as you go through the Christmas season? This can happen at any time of the year, but especially at Christmas when we are filled with so many expectations.  It seems that life conspires, especially at Christmas, to drain us of energy, and then hope. Disappointment becomes our nagging compassion and we find ourselves struggling to find joy. The wonderful gift of Christmas is that it comes to real people with genuine problems who are struggling to believe. The Christmas narrative doesn’t give us an image of perfection, instead, it shares with us God’s power to overcome our broken lives and our broken world. This is especially true of Isaiah 49:6-16.  The situation was so difficult that God’s people were saying that God had forsaken them and God had forgotten them. Did God not notice the problems they were having? Even worse, did God even care what was happening to them? Most of us can acknowledge that we have been tempted to believe these very same things. Life does not always give us what we expect. It does not always give us a happy ending. Then what good is faith? This is the moment that we need to believe because our living God is able to give us a great joy. Isaiah shares with all of us the power of God’s purpose and plan, which meets us in the darkest night and in the most hopeless journey to reassure us of a deeper joy for our lives! It is not dependent upon our circumstances. The power of God’s grace can fill our cup to overflowing and allow us to experience a wondrous joy! As you read these words of Isaiah, our most ardent prayer is that you will be filled with the joy of the Lord and you will find that it is your strength!  

Isaiah 49:6-16: “It is too small a thing for you to be my servant to restore the tribes of Jacob and bring back those of Israel I have kept. I will also make you a light for the Gentiles, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.” ⁷ This is what the LORD says– the Redeemer and Holy One of Israel– to him who was despised and abhorred by the nation, to the servant of rulers: “Kings will see you and stand up, princes will see and bow down, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.” ⁸ This is what the LORD says: “In the time of my favor I will answer you, and in the day of salvation I will help you; I will keep you and will make you to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land and to reassign its desolate inheritances, ⁹ to say to the captives, ‘Come out,’ and to those in darkness, ‘Be free! ‘”They will feed beside the roads and find pasture on every barren hill. ¹⁰ They will neither hunger nor thirst, nor will the desert heat or the sun beat down on them. He who has compassion on them will guide them and lead them beside springs of water. ¹¹ I will turn all my mountains into roads, and my highways will be raised up. ¹² See, they will come from afar– some from the north, some from the west, some from the region of Aswan. ” ¹³ Shout for joy, you heavens; rejoice, you earth; burst into song, you mountains! For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. ¹⁴ But Zion said, “The LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.” ¹⁵ “Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you! ¹⁶ See, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are ever before me. (NIV)