You will say on that day, “I will give thanks to You, O Lord. Even though You were angry with me, Your anger is turned away and You comfort me. See, God saves me. I will trust and not be afraid. For the Lord God is my strength and song. And He has become the One Who saves me.” As water from a well brings joy to the thirsty, so people have joy when He saves them (Isaiah 12:1-3, NLT).
We may at times give a hurried backwards glance at our failures, hesitating and restless in the uncomfortable realizations of feeling regret for our failures and sins. We may go slightly forward with our lives, but every now and then, the weight and residue of sin’s consequences may buffet us like a strong wind as we remember or face what remains.
We do not know which direction to go … whether to face into the wind or run from the imposing indictment of ourselves. We have seen the brutal reality of our sin and from the nastiest of nightmarish judgments that we sense we deserve, we can only long for a savior.
We long for a ray of expectation, for a glimmer of light to squeeze through the foreboding heaviness and give us a reason for a solution. We sense the disappointment of our Heavenly Father and yet He is our only hope.
We long to look up but our gaze is fixed on our failure. Then it happens, then a greater reality demands our attention. The only One that can change our helpless predicament has traveled the distance between hope and despair, between regret and promise and between foreboding and assurance to bring us salvation.
Our Savior has come! As we see Him, we faint in awareness … His love is greater than we can comprehend. He is here. He has come again. He is now with us, freely giving grace to erase all fear and His presence to empower us anew by securing the ground and the sustenance to journey forward anew into the days ahead. What joy we have as we drink deeply from His unending well of overflowing salvation. What joy to be welcomed again and again into the loving arms of the gracious beyond description Heavenly Father who travels beyond all sin to bring salvation in the gift of His Son!
Suggested Reading … Isaiah 12
