1.15.24 - Isaiah 51:6
Take a few breaths. Consider what it means for your vanishing life to be in relationship to enduring love. Wonder how it re-centers your day. Place your hand on your heart, ask: how am I loved today?
Lift up your eyes to the heavens and look at the earth beneath, for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats, but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended.
Impermanence vs. Endurance.
Speaking as God’s mouthpiece, the prophet Isaiah invites the reader to use their senses to attempt to perceive God’s presence in relationship to their environment.
Look around – your environment is vanishing, wearing out, dying before your very eyes. The similes are vivid, “like smoke, like a garment, like gnats.”
Things that seem permanent? They just aren’t. The heavens, the earth, our very bodies: these things do not last!
What does? God’s salvation and deliverance. It helps to put things into perspective - the very things that seem the most permanent are all changing - but the presence of God’s love in our world? It’s forever.
Take a few cleansing breaths. Consider what it means for your vanishing life to be in relationship to enduring love. Wonder how it re-centers your day.
Place your hand on your heart, ask: how am I loved yesterday, today, and tomorrow?
— Libby Tedder Hugus