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In Christ, Mark
In Christ, Mark
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The scriptures. May God bless the reading of His holy word.
“Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who
were in distress. In the past He humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of
Naphtali, but in the future He will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of
the Sea, beyond the Jordan—The people walking in darkness have seen a great
light; on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.”
Isaiah
9:1-2
This ends today’s reading from God's holy
word. Thanks be to God.
Today is the second of a four part series of devotions highlighting
predictions of Jesus’ coming from the Old Testament as we continue to reflect
and wait with eager anticipation through the Advent season.
Yesterday, we read that God was going to send a sign for His people and
that sign would be a virgin who would conceive and give birth to a son named
Immanuel which simply means God with us. We know this prediction came to be
some 700 years later when Mary, a virgin who the scriptures tell us was highly
favored by God, conceived by the Holy Spirit and bore God’s only Son, Jesus,
who came to be the hope for all nations and their people.
This lends itself to our second prediction also from the Book of Isaiah.
Look at these opening verses from Chapter 9:
“Nevertheless,
there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past He
humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future He will
honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—The
people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land
of deep darkness a light has dawned.” Isaiah 9:1-2
Gloom and distress came upon the land of Zebulun and Naphtali in Old
Testament times. Both were in the northern kingdom of Israel and were humbled by
God through the judgment He imposed on them after they had adopted worship
pagan worship practices, giving their devotions to false gods and idols. God
sent attacking forces from Assyria against the two lands and the people were
taken away into exile.
Indeed, those were dark times for the Israelites but as we see in today’s
scripture passage, those days were not going to endure forever. For sometime in
the future, honor would replace disgrace as Jesus would come and spend a good
part of His earthly ministry time in Galilee where He would put His power on
full display, a power that would bring hope to a nation in need of it. And in
witnessing Jesus, the people of God who had walked in darkness now saw a great
light, the Light of the world who had come from heaven to earth to save them.
He had never stopped since then.
Yes, we often look at the world we live in and can feel like we are
walking in darkness today. We see so much evil, so much affliction, so much
conflict and war, so much hardship and difficulty. The truth of the matter is
that we need Jesus more than ever before to shine His light on our lives to
break through the darkness, granting us the hope that can only be found in Him,
a hope that is not just temporary but eternal. For a day is coming for all
place their faith and trust in Jesus where we will live with Him and God the
Father in nothing but light because we will be residing in their newly created
kingdom where there will be no darkness because they have no darkness in them.
We’ll only live in their light and love forever.
Perhaps there could be no more encouraging prediction than that.
Amen.
In
Christ,
Mark
PS: Feel free to leave a comment and please share this with anyone you feel might be blessed by it.
Send any prayer requests to OurChristianWalk@aol.com
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