Tuesday after Misericordias Domini
Scripture: Isaiah 30:19-26 (NKJV)
30:19 For the people shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem; You shall weep no more. He will be very gracious to you at the sound of your cry; When He hears it, He will answer you.
20 And though the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your teachers will not be moved into a corner anymore, but your eyes shall see your teachers.
21 Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” Whenever you turn to the right hand or whenever you turn to the left.
22 You will also defile the covering of your images of silver, and the ornament of your molded images of gold. You will throw them away as an unclean thing; You will say to them, “Get away!”
23 Then He will give the rain for your seed with which you sow the ground, and bread of the increase of the earth; It will be fat and plentiful. In that day your cattle will feed in large pastures.
24 Likewise the oxen and the young donkeys that work the ground will eat cured fodder, which has been winnowed with the shovel and fan.
25 There will be on every high mountain and on every high hill rivers and streams of waters, in the day of the great slaughter, when the towers fall.
26 Moreover the light of the moon will be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun will be sevenfold, as the light of seven days, in the day that the Lord binds up the bruise of His people and heals the stroke of their wound.
Devotion
God “will be very gracious” to us and we “shall dwell in Zion at Jerusalem.” Nevertheless, the prophet Isaiah understood that we will not be without trouble and hardship, for he writes “…the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction…”
Though Heaven will be only joy, the members of the Church on Earth reach that final glory through adversity and affliction. “Believers are not renewed in this life perfectly or completely, for although their sin is covered by the perfect obedience of Christ, so that it is not imputed to believers for condemnation, and also the mortification of the old Adam and the renewal in the spirit of their mind is begun through the Holy Ghost, nevertheless the old Adam clings to them still in their nature and all its internal and external powers….
“9] Therefore, because of these lusts of the flesh the truly believing, elect, and regenerate children of God need in this life not only the daily instruction and admonition, warning, and threatening of the Law, but also frequently punishments, that they may be roused [the old man is driven out of them] and follow the Spirit of God, as it is written Ps. 119:71: It is good for me that I have been afflicted, that I might learn Thy statutes” (FC SD VI 7-9). Isaiah speaks of this affliction when he says, “Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, ‘This is the way, walk in it.’” As we look forward to “that day,” we call out to the Lord in our time of troubles. The Lord has not abandoned us. He has forgiven us for our sins.
We pray: O Lord, show us the way to eternal life, that we may walk in it. Amen.
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
