Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:3c
He was despised, and we held Him in low esteem.
(Isaiah's prophecy emphasizes the mob's deeply contemptible attitude
toward Jesus when they considered or looked on Him,
foretelling their rejection of the very Messiah for Whom they were waiting.
They did not value or regard Him. In fact, they considered Him nothing
and held Him in such utter contempt
that they felt He was unworthy of their concern or attention.
While we today may not physically look on Jesus in His suffering,
we still today despise and reject Him when we refuse to honor Him
by trusting Him and believing that He is Who He says He is
and that we are who He says we are in Him.
The One Who most in all the world
deserves our esteem and regard and worship
is the very One Whom we reject and despise.
When we go about our daily lives without seeking and acknowledging Him,
we treat Him with the same contempt as did the mob who crucified Him,
treating Him as if He were despicable.
Lord, help us to look to You today as Savior, Redeemer, and Messiah
and to honor You by giving back to You our very lives!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:3b
Like One from Whom people hide their faces

(As Isaiah prophecies the suffering of Jesus,
the picture here is of people who can't look on Jesus
because He is so disgusting, both from His disfigurement
and from His claim to be their Messiah.
The phrase alludes to the horror of looking on a leprous face

that appeared so inhuman it was impossible to look on the person.

The phrase may also refer to Jesus' Own awareness
of the untold shame and humiliation of the sin

that He took on Himself and, like lepers of ancient days,

hid His Face from the view of others in an attempt
to avoid revealing the horror of all that He knew He bore
of the degradation and shame of mankind.
Still today, rather than seek Him out and fall before His majesty,
rather than run to Him to acknowledge His Lordship in our lives,
rather than embrace Him for the sacrifice He made for us,
just like His closest friends and disciples in His time on earth,
we hide from Him to avoid Him, refusing to look to Him,
pushing Him away and denying any association with Him,
and scornful of everything He offers to us through His sacrifice.
Instead, today, we often foolishly try to fill our needs with things and people,

often foolishly trying in vain to exercise control over situations and people,

and, in so doing, often failing even to control ourselves.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:3a
He is despised and rejected by mankind,

(Speaking hundreds of years before Christ's life and death,

Isaiah describes the way men will treat Him.

Jesus was reviled and loathed, even from the beginning of His public ministry,
essentially, for merely doing good works, for healing hurting people.
And, finally, when evil people had their way,
He was rejected and cast out as being unworthy to be considered a man.
Rejection here refers to His being completely forsaken by mankind
and, even more specifically, even by His closest friends.

We still scorn and reject Jesus today when we engage in unbelief,

when we choose not to believe Him for Who He is,

when we disobey and rebel against Him.)

a Man of suffering, and familiar with pain:

(In another translation, the phrase is that Jesus was a Man of sorrows.

The meaning behind the word "sorrows" and suffering refers
to both physical and mental and emotional pain. Jesus knew all that pain.
He embraced the deepest kind of pain for our sake.
Rather than appearing as the royal King,
the Almighty Son of God that He was and is,
for our sake, Christ the Messiah chose to suffer.
He was acquainted with grief and knew pain and suffering intimately.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:2b
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to Him,
nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.
(Christ came in humility and meekness,
not as a mighty King, although He is that,
but He came in frail human flesh, in all its normality and ordinariness,
from an insignificant earthly family of meager means,
with a working-class father and mother who were ordinary residents of their town,
bringing nothing about Himself that would set Him apart in the eyes of others,
bringing nothing of His glory and splendor and magnificence with Him
that, in fact, God's people were looking for in that day,
having laid all that aside to take on complete human form for our sake.
While we often have preconceived ideas
about what God's interventions should look like,
about how the Lord should act and what He should do,
He comes to us often in the very ordinary moments of our lives.
Just as His Own people didn't recognize Him
because of their preconceived notions,
we often do not recognize the very Presence of the Lord
as He appears in our midst and in our lives,
overlooking His work on our behalf because we set our expectations
on outcomes and trappings that are far different from what the Lord is doing.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:2a
He grew up before Him like a tender shoot,
(The verb tense of the Hebrew word translated grow in English
indicates that the actuality of Jesus growing up and maturing
at some point in the future is already an accomplished fact.
Even though the tender shoot, Jesus, would grow up
unnoticed, unacclaimed, insignificant, and ordinary in the eyes of the world,
the Lord Himself is hovering over Him,
tenderly watching over His Son in His human form,
a tender, humble life, in all its human frailty,
even as a loving mother carefully tends to her child.
Today, though we may be insignificant in the eyes of the world,
though our lives may be filled with hurt that is unnoticed by others,
the Lord carefully watches over us today just as He did His Own Son.)
and like a root out of dry ground.
(This Son of God will come forth from a root
from the stump of a tree that had long been considered dead,
from the "root" of Jesse, King David's father,
and from the House of David having been long been reduced to no influence.
From this dead stump, Jesus will be like a root
growing in a desert place, out of dry, inhospitable ground,
springing out of a lineage from which no life of royalty was thought possible.
Jesus did not grow up in the home of a king,
with all the majesty that attends such people,
but, rather in the home of a poor family whose lineage was traced to David.
Though we may be poor and broken in others' or even our own eyes,
we, too, are a root that the Lord has caused to spring up
out of the stump of our past, out of the very brokenness from which we come.
As He tenderly tends to us, the offshoot which is our life in Him
becomes a strong root and He makes us royalty because we belong to Him.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:1b
. . . and to whom has the Arm of the Lord been revealed?
(The mighty Arm of the Lord is none other than Jesus Christ Himself!
The Lord shows His strength and power,
the strength and power that resides in Christ Jesus
and is symbolized in the Lord's strong right Arm,
the Man through Whom He wields such omnipotent weapons
as truth, salvation, love, forgiveness, and mercy.
To whom has He made Himself known?
The Lord shows us His strength and power
as symbolized in His strong right Arm that He raises to wage battle.
He unveils Himself and makes Himself most known
through the Word Who became flesh, through Jesus,
Who comes forward in the mortal and weak form of the created,
one more picture to us to show in graphic terms how the Lord uses our weakness
in which to exercise His indomitable strength.
The Arm of the Lord is revealed to us today
in every place of weakness and inadequacy and brokenness in our lives.
It is His mighty strength that operates in our mortality today!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 53:1a
Who has believed our message
(The Lord has spoken His message of salvation and hope to us,
but the question remains who has received and believed the message.
Unless we hear the report of the Lord, His truths that speak of our release from sin,
of our hope in Him, of our redemption and salvation in Him for all we need,
we cannot believe what we don't hear.
Unless we believe that good report from our Maker,
the message is rendered ineffective.
Isaiah is saying much the same here as Paul says later
when He reminds us that faith comes from hearing the Word
and our hearing should be focused on just that, hearing the Word.
Today, we have the choice to listen to God's Word
filled with His truths and promises and then to embrace them
as truly and practically applying to our lives.
His message to us and about Himself is for real!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:15b
For what they were not told, they will see,
and what they have not heard, they will understand.
(As the prophet Isaiah foretells the tortured, sacrificial death of the Messiah,
he declares that man then will see and hear the revealed truth of the Lord
in His message of salvation and redemption and hope and forgiveness.
What man could not ever envision,
men will now see as the wonder of God's great love,
of Christ's once-for-all blood sacrifice for the sins of man,
for the redemption payment that reconciles and bridges
the otherwise impassable gulf between God and us.
When they see Christ revealed, men will finally understand
what before had been unimaginable and incomprehensible to them.
Today, because we have experienced the redemption of the Lord for ourselves,
because we walk in the promises He has declared over us,
and because He has given us wisdom and understanding
through Holy Spirit Who resides within us,
now we begin to see the magnitude and the wonder
of His great and encompassing love for us.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:15a
. . . so He will sprinkle many nations,
and kings will shut their mouths because of Him.
(When Christ's blood was shed in His death for the sin of mankind,
when men then and now look on Christ Jesus and see
the brokenness and death of the sacrificial Lamb,
they see that His blood pours salvation over the nations.
Revealing Himself to the peoples of His creation, Jesus will sprinkle them
with the truth of His deity, of His salvation, of His promises,
of His supreme rule as He is seated at God's Own right Hand.
Just as amazing as Christ's debasement was to the onlookers of His day
will be the amazement of those who see Christ come in His glory,
both at being raised from the dead, as well as returning in triumph at His Second Coming.
When we all stand before such revelation and grandeur,
even kings will be dumbstruck in silent wonder at the beauty of the Lord,
at the all-encompassing truth and wisdom of the Lord,
at the power of His Presence that radiates
peace and comfort and righteousness and holiness
and forgiveness and hope and love for us today.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:14

Just as there were many who were appalled at Him—
His appearance was so disfigured beyond that of any human being
and His form marred beyond human likeness—
(The prophet Isaiah foretells the absolute amazed astonishment
of those in Jesus' day who would look on Jesus' appearance
and see a Man who is so beyond human recognition
that He doesn't even look human, doesn't even look like a man.
They will be amazed that One
Who claimed to be the Messiah would be brought so low.
As we observe the workings of God in the life of Christ,
even in our own lives, much of it is completely incomprehensible to us,
beyond anything we could ever fully understand.
Just as in Christ's life, at times we experience hardships
that disfigure and mar us, making us look less like a follower of God
than one who is being severely punished.
But just as Christ 's debasement and "disfigurement" were part of God's plan
to bring salvation to His people through His Messiah,
perhaps, just perhaps, our own "debasement" and difficult seasons
are a part of God's plan for us and for those around us
as He Himself leads us into the "impossible" places we face today.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

 

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:13
See, My Servant will act wisely;   
He will be raised and lifted up and highly exalted.
(The Lord declares here that His Messiah is His Servant
dedicated to complete loyalty and service to God, a Bond Slave,
and that His actions and behaviors, His reign,
will spring forth from the sure foundation of God's great wisdom and discernment,
the kind of wisdom that results in a reign of goodness and prosperity.
The Lord's high and exalted place is the seat of the highest honor,
at the very right Hand of God Himself.
Today, this message to Israel then and to us now reaffirms
the legitimacy of putting our faith in this Servant of the Lord, this Jesus.
The Lord also calls us who are a reflection of the Servant Messiah,
as His servant and bond slave ourselves, to act wisely and prudently,
to act from the wisdom of the Lord.
He also promises us, as the very reflection of His Messiah,
that we will be raised and lifted up and exalted,
not only before others, but also before the Lord.
Today, if we are in a place of brokenness and discord,
God Himself declares that He will vindicate and honor us,
that, even as He rescued His Messiah, He will rescue us.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:12
But you will not leave in haste or go in flight;
(The Lord here foretells ahead of time His people's exit from Babylon.
He tells them this exodus will be a deliberate and calculated action.
Before they were commanded to leave by the Pharaoh.
Now they Lord is demanding their departure.
And, unlike Israel's past, hurried departure from Egypt
when they were filled with fear and uncertainty,
now, the Lord has revealed to them His clear purposes and intent.
Now, they can appropriately prepare themselves
to be fit instruments to carry forth the Lord's high purposes
as they return the vessels of the Lord to His Temple in Jerusalem.
Today, the Lord has also foretold our own freedom from Babylon,
and, since we still live in this world,
that our exit will be deliberate and intentional,
that we are called to be clean and pure
because we know that He has set us free from these dark forces.)
for the Lord will go before you,
the God of Israel will be your rear guard.
(Both as the Commanding General clearing the way ahead
and as the One Who gathers up those in the rear,
He will gather us up, even if we are lagging and struggling behind.
The Lord also declares He guards the flank of our advance against any enemy attack.
Because He is our rear guard, we can walk through this journey
from exile to our home in Him today unafraid and certain
that He is well able to provide for all our needs and guard us in all our ways.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:11b
Come out from it [Babylonian exile] and be pure,
(Unlike the exodus from Egypt when Israel carried away the spoils of Egypt,
here the Lord warns His people to take nothing with them
from their Babylonian exile, that they are to leave,
but to leave pure and undefiled by taking nothing
of the associations of exile with them
since they will be carrying the very articles
of the Lord's house back to the Temple of the Lord.
The Lord is calling them to keep their hands clean and unsullied
with anything that might defile the purity of their worship.
We, too, are called today to be pure and holy, even as the Lord is holy,
as we come out of the places of bondage in our lives.)
you who carry the articles of the Lord's house.
(The Lord is telling His people to prepare
to depart from their Babylonian exile,
and the phrase He uses to refer to them
alludes to their function as priests and their call to worship.
The phrase can also be translated as armor bearers,
making a clear reference to their function as warriors and their call to battle.
In this multi-leveled phrase, the Lord is calling His people
to be both warrior and priest, connecting their warfare against the enemy
as part of their call to worship their God.
We, today, are also still called to engage in spiritual battle
with spiritual weapons of warfare against the forces of the world
that try to defeat us, that try to make us captives, that try to place us in exile.
We are also called to be priests unto the Lord,
to focus on Him, to fulfill our priestly call, to worship the Lord,
which, as it turns out, is the greatest weapon we have at our disposal.
Our priestly and warrior functions are intertwined
so that to fulfill one today we have to fulfill the other.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:11
Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing!
Come out from it and be pure,
you who carry the articles of the Lord's house.
(As He declares the people's freedom from their Babylonian exile,
the Lord knows that some of His people may be reluctant
to leave what is oppressive simply because it is familiar.
He is urging them all to rise up and leave the place of their oppression,
and His injunction is to leave the place quickly
without taking with them any of that which belonged to Babylon,
none of its gods, none of its ideas, none of its so-called riches.
The only articles He instructs the people to bring out of Babylon
are the vessels from the Temple that had also been taken to Babylon.
He is telling them their release will be complete,
as well as their return to their homeland.
He wants His people to take with them
only what points them to Him and to true worship.
Today, the Lord calls us to rise up and depart quickly
from our own Babylon places of fear, despondency, anger, oppression,
sickness, and brokenness, and to return to our freedom in Him,
to our home country in Him, taking with us
only what we have learned from Him during our troubled times,
taking with us the true worship of the Lord as complete Provider,
so that even those past, difficult places
will only serve to point to His salvation and deliverance and faithfulness.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:10
The Lord will lay bare His holy Arm in the sight of all the nations,
(The Lord has determined to set His people free from their exiled captivity.
In doing so, He replaces His clothing of royal rule and readies Himself
for executing and enforcing His just cause for His people.
Through His strong right Hand, the Hand of His power and strength,
He bares His Arm to make Himself ready for battle
against all the nations and forces that stand against Him and His people.
He will plainly reveal Himself as the Foe of any who try to resist
the force of His overwhelming determination to set His people free.
Today, the Lord makes that same declaration to us,
and that same holy Arm, that same readiness
to show Himself strong and victorious on our behalf
is at work right now in our lives!)
and all the ends of the earth will see the salvation of our God.
(The Lord does not wage a secret war against the forces of darkness.
He fights for His people plainly for all to see.
He makes clear His intentions to come to our defense, to free us,
so that others will see His great power and faithfulness and love
and be drawn to Him through what they see He is doing for and through us today.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:9
Burst into songs of joy together, you ruins of Jerusalem,
(Where once our lives bore the scars and wounds of exile and trouble,
now we as the people of God lift praises to Him
because He has delivered us from the same kind of bondage
that His people faced in Babylon.
He has not left us there to die, but He delivers us.
Now, what once had been the ruin and desolation of our lives,
like Jerusalem, destroyed by the onslaught of the enemy,
we now turn to a shout of songs of praise for God's faithfulness to us
as He replenishes and restores our lives from out of the ruins.)
for the Lord has comforted His people, He has redeemed Jerusalem.
(Although we may have been residing in the trials before us for "70 years,"
even as Jerusalem had been desolate for 70 years,
the Lord was faithful in His promise to deliver His people
and to restore His people's beloved homeland.
Today He is still faithful to us to answer our heart's cry to Him
and to comfort and redeem the lost places in our lives.
His redemption is here and a powerful gift to us today.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:8
Listen! Your watchmen lift up their voices; together they shout for joy.
(The Lord has promised to release His people from their Babylonian exile.
The responsibility of the watchmen who were placed in tall towers on the city walls
of God's beloved City of Zion was to warn of any encroaching enemies.
Here expressing great joy of their own in a spontaneous shout of praise,
these watchmen will also joyfully announce
the return of God's people to their homeland.
As we accept our release from exile and desperate situations,
as we follow the Lord out of the bondage under which we have lived,
as we stand on His promises to us, we can also release the shout of pure joy
at the wondrous intervention the Lord has made in our lives.)
When the Lord returns to Zion, they will see it with their own eyes.
(This deliverance, this manifestation of the Lord, His dealings with His people,
will be more than just symbolic and will be plainly visible.
We will clearly see Him and His works in our lives, close up and present,
as clearly as we see each other when we stand in close proximity to each other.
As the Lord returns us to our home in Him,
as He returns us to the truth of His promises,
He reveals Himself and His works to us plainly
so there is no doubt whatsoever that He is the One
Who is our Deliverer, our Hope, our Salvation.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:7
How beautiful on the mountains are the feet of those
who bring good news, who proclaim peace, who bring good tidings,
who proclaim salvation, who say to Zion,  "Your God reigns!"
(The Lord has declared He has seen the plight of His people
and that He will deliver them after their 70 years in Babylonian exile.
The people of God, in their oppression and heavy sadness now have hope!
They are filled with the joy of picturing the runners
whose job is to report the progress of any battle
who will cross into the mountains of Judea
with the good news that God's people are freed from captivity,
that the battle which had been lost is now won,
and that their God has truly seen and heard their cries for help
and has declared He will return them to their homeland.
Today, the Lord still reigns, even over the difficulties we face,
even over the oppression we might be under,
even over the places of exile we may find ourselves.
The message is still the same today,
that the Lord is coming to deliver us,
that He is setting us free in Him,
that He is returning us to a place of victory and home in Him.
That message, indeed, is a beautiful and glad shout of victory!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:5c-6
"And all day long My Name is constantly blasphemed.
(Expressing pride in their accomplishment of defeating Israel
and forcing her into exile, the Babylonian captors
exult in their oppression of God's people
and mock the God of Israel as powerless.
Any time we as God's people are bound in exile and captivity
to the forces and oppressors of the world,
the attack is on the Lord and it is His Name that is mocked,
a situation that will yield dire consequences
to those who do mock the Lord's people and blaspheme His Name.)
Therefore My people will know My Name;
(God will not tolerate an attack on His Name or His people,
so He makes sure that we as God's people will see the mighty deliverance
that the Lord will provide and by that evidence
we will acknowledge Him and His mighty Name.)
therefore in that day they will know
that it is I Who foretold it. Yes, it is I."
(No mere man has declared a deliverance for us today,
but the Lord God Almighty has declared it,
and He will cause us to see Him in new and,
to this point, unknown ways as our Deliverer and Victor.
When we actually experience His Presence and deliverance,
we will know that what He said He would do He has done,
a monument to the truthfulness of the what the Lord says.
Today, He says our deliverance is at hand
and that He is the One Who has declared it and brought it about.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:5b
"For My people have been taken away for nothing,
(God's people had been unlawfully seized, overcome, and taken into exile
by the power of a Babylon that had no right to them, no just claim on their lives.
Even though Israel had sinned and was now experiencing
the awful result of their disobedience to God and was forced to live in exile,
the Lord declares that Babylon does not have a right to His Own.
Today the Lord sees that the strongholds in our lives have no right over us,
no just claim on us, and He says that we are His people who belong to Him,
not to the foreign forces that have attacked us and have controlled us.)
and those who rule them mock," declares the Lord.
(The Lord sees and hears the oppressors of His people.
In other translations, mockery is translated "howl,"
either referring to the captives howling in the pain of their captivity
or to the oppressors howling over and mocking their captives.
As He looks at the situation His people are in,
He says the mocking and howling are unacceptable,
whichever group they refer to, and declares the situation untenable.
He still sees where we are today, the burden under which we groan,
and the oppression in our lives that mock the God we serve.
The Lord gives us insight into His determination process to come and set us free
as He reveals His declaration that His people, that we,
have suffered enough at the hands of oppression that has no right over us
and that both causes us to howl in pain while mocking us and our God.
Today, He has come to set us free!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

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The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:4-5a
For this is what the Sovereign Lord says:
"At first My people went down to Egypt to live;
lately, Assyria has oppressed them.
(In the Egyptian sojourn, the Israelites had gone there voluntarily,
but over time had allowed themselves to be suppressed and enslaved.
However, the Assyrian oppression was caused by the Israelites' refusal
to obey God and His commands, as they willingly embraced sin and rebellion.
Today, we may have been overpowered by an Egypt in our lives,
allowing ourselves to be drawn into slavery
even though our original choices had been legitimate and appropriate.
Or, we may have intentionally embraced sin and rebellion against God
and have felt the oppressive results of an Assyria in our lives.)
"And now what do I have here?" declares the Lord.
(God's people here in Isaiah are now living in Babylon,
a place where they are exiled and in bondage,
again, because of their disobedience and rebellion against God.
Now the Lord sees the situation in which His people
are experiencing the consequences of their choices
and as one demanding His attention because of His people's plight.
He shows us here His careful deliberations about His people
as He decides what He will do on their behalf.
We, too, may find ourselves in a Babylon of exile in our lives
because we have made choices of disobedience and rebellion,
but we can know today that the Lord sees us, sees our situation,
and carefully deliberates what He will do on our behalf
as He develops His plan for what He will do to deliver us.)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
513 254 3874

Good Word for Today!

The Lord Be With You Today!

Isaiah 52:3
For this is what the Lord says:
"You were sold for nothing, and without money you will be redeemed."
(The Lord reminds His people that they sold themselves into exile for nothing,
giving themselves freely into sin and disobedience
because they walked into sin out of their own free will.
He is also saying that He received no price for them
when He allowed them to be taken captive by the Babylonians
and, therefore, will release them at will without any ransom payment.
Since we belong to the God Who created us,
even when He allows us to sell ourselves into slavery
or when He permits us to be restricted in exile,
or when He uses a Babylonian force to overtake us,
because He receives no purchase price for us whom He owns already,
He will not pay money for our release,
but will march us out of the captive places when He chooses.
Because He owns us already as His chosen people,
the Lord has the right to redeem us when and how He chooses.
We belong to a loving and merciful Redeemer Who hovers over us today!)

May the Lord richly bless you this day!

In Christ's love,

Blessings,

Sally
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