March 30, 2011

3-30-11 Wednesday, 5:15 am Springfield, 35 degrees, calm.

A neighbor of ours, Jeff Steury died on Saturday, and his funeral will be at Kingsway. I hope to attend the visitation today from 6-8. I do not think I ever met him or his family, but I probably have seen them in our small subdivision. His picture in the online obituary looks familiar. Life is so brief, whether a person dies unexpectedly in their thirties, or lives to be a hundred. The Body of Christ, the church, has so much to offer a person, and it can be so easily ignored. In fact, it is easy to ignore God throughout life, and one of my goals is to move the faith community ever more into revealing God’s glory daily so that it becomes harder to ignore God as His people bear witness to His love.

Isaiah 63

In this chapter there is the image of the one, “mighty to save” who has “trodden the winepress alone”, with robes stained and spattered (verses 1-3). This seems to be an image of Christ, including but not limited to his atonement on the cross. The language reminds me of the line “he has trampled out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored” from the Battle Hymn of the republic. However, this line probably comes more directly from Revelation 14:19-20, an apocalyptic appeal to divine justice and deliverance from oppression in the final judgment:“And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.”

Isaiah 63:16 states “O Lord, our father; our Redeemer from of old is your name.” God is father, and this reminds me that God is my father, I am his child. The nation of Israel had God as father, but turned their backs on him, choosing instead to serve the gods of this world, including the god of their belly. As I hear the birds beginning to sing on this early morning in March, I am so thankful that God is God and has called me by name.

Lord, I have heard the joyful sound, and I know that You reign in heaven and on earth. Guide me today as I serve you with all that I am.