A series of Thought for the Day, for this week, based on Isaiah 55
Monday
Isaiah 55.1 “Come for water, all who are thirsty; though you have no money, come, buy grain and eat. Come, buy wine and milk, not for money, not for a price.
Three times we are invited – ‘Come’. Sometimes we are so concerned to exalt the power of God and his sovereign call, we forget that God’s love doesn’t compel our love. He invites us to come to Him for all that we need. Money, our capacity to pay our own way, doesn’t matter. God already offers what we need – if we come.
Tuesday
Isaiah 55.2 “Why spend your money for what is not food, your earnings on what will not satisfy? Listen to me and you will fare well, you will enjoy the fat of the land.”
Sometimes we don’t know what’s good for us. We think we do, but we make wrong choices. We yearn to be satisfied with our lives, content, safe, and nourished. Isaiah warned the people of God that they can only be satisfied by the Creator who made them. Instead of pursuing ‘what is not food’, pray “Give us this day our daily bread.”
Wednesday
Isaiah 55.3 “Come to me and listen to my words, hear me and you will have life. I shall make an everlasting covenant with you, to love you faithfully, as I loved David.”
When Jesus poured wine and said, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood”, he had in mind verses like this. Through Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross, God has made an everlasting covenant to all who come in faith and trust. Once again, this is the God who says “Come to me, and listen to my words.” This is the God whose love has the strength of an everlasting covenant. We have God’s word on that!
Thursday
Isaiah 55.6 “Seek the Lord while he may be found, call to him while he is close at hand.”
Isaiah is the poet and prophet whose life work seems to have been issuing invitations on behalf of God. Many of us who have been on the road of faith for years can be tempted to think we have ‘found’ God, and no longer need to seek Him. True enough, in one sense. But we will always find ourselves in hard places, or times when hope is low and light is dim. He is near, call upon him; seek God because if you ask you will receive, if you seek you will find, and if you knock – doors open.
Friday
Isaiah 55.7 “Let the wicked forsake his ways, and the evil their thoughts: let them return to the Lord, who will take pity on them, and to our God, for he will freely forgive.”
This verse isn’t about other people; it’s about us. Read it alongside these words: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” (I Jn.1.8-9) Forgiveness is always God’s preferred option.
Saturday
Isaiah 55.8-9 “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways,” declares the Lord. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
We can never out think God. Whatever is happening in our lives God knows more about it than we ever could. Our horizons are limited, our line of vision restricted. But God sees the end from the beginning. Faith is to trust when we can’t see, and to go on hoping in the God whose thoughts out think us, and whose ways are always faithful. In the death and resurrection of Jesus, God’s thoughts display heaven’s wisdom in finding the One way of salvation we would never have thought of!
Sunday
Isaiah 55. 10-11 “As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”
Isaiah is the poet and prophet not only of invitations, but of promises. He describes a cycle of blessing under which all who seek God flourish. Rain and snow, the watering of the earth, the sowing of seed and the baking of bread – God’s promises are like that. Life-giving, dependable, a continual cycle of blessing and flourishing. God’s words are sent for a purpose, – and they are words of blessing, creation, fruitfulness and life.
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