Quietly Looking (Isaiah 18:4)

 


Wednesday, December 18, 2024


Psalm 144

Isaiah 17:12-18:7

Mark 11:12-26


Quietly Looking (Isaiah 18:4)


Continuing our theme of kingly virtues and, more specifically, how we can know that God will lead us to success in our attempt to live virtuously, we get a message through Isaiah of the great Christian comfort.


God is sovereign over all things, in all places, at all times. He reigns supreme over even the concept of things, places and time itself. There is nothing outside God’s control; nothing changes his mind, and nothing escapes his notice, for he himself is in all things, directing them according to his perfect purpose.


“Go, you swift messengers,” he says, “to a people feared near and far, a nation mighty and conquering” and tell them that they are not all that they are cracked up to be. Anything they achieve is because God decrees it to be so.


And so it is with little old you and me. God gives us certain responsibilities; he places life circumstances before us and asks us to respond in a certain way, and he holds us responsible for our response, whatever it may be. Yet in the meantime, alongside, above and below all of that, God is in control. He looks quietly from his dwelling, completely at ease, like clear heat in sunshine, and decides what happens and when.


An Orthodox priest once described it like this: God has placed us on a river, in a little canoe. And he lets us dip the oar in the water.


The reason why God’s sovereignty is the great Christian comfort is because of God’s promise to us. He who has begun a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:6) Your first steps on the path of Christian virtue will finish with the full conversion of you into the perfect image of Jesus. God has decreed it to be so – and his will be done, amen.


What achievements in your life can you point to that prove God’s promise? What struggles make you doubt God’s promise? How can you be reminded that God has promised that your efforts at virtuous living will never be in vain?


O Lord of hosts: you behold the entirety of your creation from your dwelling. Bring about the change in your people which we so earnestly desire, so that we may know that you are completing the good work you have begun in us.

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