Recently an email came through asking to share an inspirational verse with other people. One that pops in your head when you’re in need. Isaiah 55:9 has been a verse that has come to my mind very often when I’ve been in need of comfort, assurance, answers. This is a verse that settles deep into my soul –

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”

This verse really encourages me to hold fast to my faith and belief in God and that His love and wisdom will lead us through times of adversity, no matter what the cause. Perhaps it’s a period of grief, sickness, death, war, political unrest, family disagreements, arguments in the church, problems at work, whatever. If we don’t give in to despair (God never does) and instead give in to prayer we can be led through the adversity. It might not be easy, we might be asked to raise our awareness of our surroundings, our weakness, God’s strength, someone else’s strength, our own strength and another person’s weakness or need. We might have to give up thinking about ourselves so often and start thinking more about other people and their needs. We might have to learn about something new that will change the way we think and behave.

Sometimes, in our own times of adversity, if we have been people who have always served others, we must learn that allowing other people to serve us is in actuality ok, and even a form of service. Ponder that thought for a moment. Allowing others to serve you is an act of humility that is so important to God. Jesus came into this world as a baby, needing to be served. This certainly is a completely different entrance than everyone was expecting, and yet, those who served him did not feel encumbered and burdened. Instead they were honored, they listened to angelic messengers, they prayed, they allowed themselves to be led. Later, when Jesus called his disciples to follow him, they also spent time listening, they asked for explanations because they desired to understand. What about us in this generation? How are we doing in the areas of listening and being led?

An earlier verse in the Chapter reads:

Give ear and come to me; hear me, that your soul may live. (Isaiah 55:3)

In the New Testament one of Jesus’ prayers is so simple and yet, so powerful. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.” (Mark 4:9) And again in Mark 4:23 he prays, “If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” Perhaps you’ve never thought of those verses as prayers, I can’t help but believe they were. And, when I consider them as prayer I realize that he is praying this for all people in every generation. God’s desire for us to listen to him, to learn from him, is incredible, so incredible that God gave us Jesus, to save us from our sins.

Let us pray:

Lord, please open our ears and help us to listen to your Living Word in our generation, by daily reading or listening, by studying and inwardly digesting them (taking them deep into our hearts and minds) that we might be led into more heavenly ways of living on earth.” AMEN