Readings for Pentecost 14

Isaiah 35:4-7a

James 2: 1-10, 14-18

Mark 7: 31-37

Passage for meditation: “say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong, do not fear; your God will come, he will come with vengeance; with divine retribution he will come to save you."  ⁵ Then will the eyes of the blind be opened and the ears of the deaf unstopped.” Isaiah 35:4-5   

Devotion:  These are words of comfort spoken to a people who had been forcefully taken from their homeland, put in shackles and led away as prisoners by a brutal and fearful enemy.

The great comfort is that the author and creator of life, the one who hung the sun and the moon in the sky, the one who is greater than the mighty mountains, the one who knows what is to come before it happens, who knows the very number of hair on our head, the one who speaks things into existence and wipes out things that are, is coming and will save from the hand of the brutal and fearful enemy.

Our lives are seen in the words of the prophet Isaiah.  On one hand, we too were people in captivity, bound in chains of slavery to sin by a brutal and fearful enemy.  We were in need of recue, recue by God, who came in the flesh to save with vengeance and retribution from the powerful enemy.  On the other hand, we are always under attack by the enemy as he attempts to shackle us again in our sin and drag us to the bowels of hell.  We are continually in need of the God who came- and still comes- to fight for us with all vengeance and divine retribution, until that day when the fearful enemy is no more. 

Our God, Christ Jesus has come to save- continues to come to save- and will come again in the glory of victory over the brutal and fearful enemy.  Be strong.  Do not fear.  Our God comes!