Wednesday, June 30, 2010

God's Love

I like telling you, dear reader, about the messages I encounter in the Bible.  I tell you these things mostly because I don't want to forget them myself.

On June 18th, when I came home from the last school day of the year, I began my Summer vacation by randomly opening the Bible to see what it was that God might want to tell me.

The Second Book of Kings and the Book of Isaiah are my two dearest books, it seems.  These are the two that speak to me, speak to me, and speak to me again.  It's incredible how often they open up to me with words that seem tailored to my life.

Here's what I hit:  the 54th Chapter of Isaiah.

The whole chapter is very uplifting and joyful.  It announces that she who has been like a "childless woman" (that's me!) can now "sing and shout for joy."  The verses exclaimed, "Now you will have more children than a woman whose husband left her.  Make the tent you live in larger; lengthen its ropes and strengthen the pegs!  You will extend your boundaries on all sides; your people will get back the land that the other nations now occupy.  Cities now desserted will be filled with people!"

How delightful.  It's like the fulfillment of the Prayer of Jabez. 

What I loved most was that which you see in the first photograph above.  With those lines, it is as if God was telling me that He forgives me of any way in which I have put others before Him.  And he forgives me for falling into the despair of lonesomeness, as I did so often during the last three years.  He will love me as a doting husband loves His wife.  I feel sooooo undeserving.

But yet, despite my many weaknesses and failings, the chapter continues with the beautiful words that you as the right.  God's love for me will never, ever end!