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Preach the WordTopics of the Message of the Bible |
Note: Both programs are BETA versions. Links for help might not work properly. Some errors are identified and will be solved with the next release, which will be uploaded within February.
And be aware: Besides the Bible, every book and even more every computer program is erroneous. The difference only is that in some cases we know the error, in others we do not know it. This is, why new books are so favored.
It is a very emotional word. The prophet says it in the name of God. Isaiah had to speak a lot about the sins and transgressions of God's people. But this word allows a deep look into the heart of God. It shows us the deep love, which God feels to his people and which makes him turn towards them again. It is the holy cross of Christ, which can be seen here already. … more …
At the first glance, the emotionality of this sentence makes it difficult to find an access to this word. God compares himself to a mother. To be a mother, what does that mean:
We read a lot about family tragedies, where people failed to sustain this multiple stress: Career, family, social commitment: They could not cope. The modern woman, who occupies high management positions, while also pulling their children: It is difficult, to use this women as a pattern for a comforting mother. But God uses the mother as a pattern for his relationship with his chosen people.
Therefore, do we deal with a pattern of a long past time? Were we so ill-advised to refer to precisely this text as a word of God of the year?
Let's look again from the other side on this text: "I will comfort you ..." saith our God.
God sees that we are in need of comfort. Not only a mother, everyone can ask at any time whether he or she has done enough: worked enough, loved enough, has shown enough joy and optimism. We can provide at any time the question of whether we have used our time really efficiently, whether we within our network of relationships, in which we live, really did our very best. With this network of relationships, not only the children are meant but also parents, friends, siblings, colleagues, all people with whom we come into contact. And then this feeling creeps over us that we have done too little. The excuse that the day just has only 24 hours, does not draw because we can indeed set priorities. Who did not hear from his boss already, when he did not deliver in time, because a lot of customers wanted to be served simultaneously: "You assigned the wrong priorities." This is not a good management style, but for a boss a simple way to evade responsibility. And it hurts especially the good employee who has made an effort to meet all needs.
God will comfort us, will comfort the fact that we did not make it, as we have planned it. And as a mother does: She takes her child in the arm, so that it can feel the closeness and warmth of his or her mother. And when this is done, then the child is again in a position to talk about what happened. This is not a privilege of the mothers alone, but it is therefore perceived as intense, because the relationship to our mother is longer than our life. And this is the point of comparison with God: He is for all of us our common beginning, our Creator, who has given us certain talents and who refused to give us certain other talents, who has defined our day to 24 hours, who created our need for rest, but who also gave us a certain, but limited strength to work. He knows our limits, the alleged limits that we fix because our faith is so small. But he also knows our objective limits, because he is our Creator, he fixed them.
He is the one who knows us much better than our own mother, he wants to reach out to us, embosom us and comfort us through our failure. What a glorious promise, not only for the year 2016: God wants to come to us and embosom us, so that we know where we come from, so that we again live in harmony with ourselves. When a mother says to her child: "Your papa also never managed to do this ...", then both laugh. The problem then is not yet cleared, but the perspective is different. I realize that life goes on, even when I am not able to do that. And so God wants to show us where our faith is simply not big enough, where we could achieve much more if we would strengthen our faith. But in addition, He also wants to show us where we are pressing ourselves and thus do not find the peace that he wants to give us.
May the year 2016 be such a year in which you will find rest in the encounter with God and in which you concentrate on those tasks which are really your obligations in God’s eyes and consequently also your talent, because God is your creator.