Daily Devotion

Selection Taken From:
A Year with God by R.P. Nettelhorst

Make this the year you let God's Word "dwell in you richly"---and marvel at the results! Each entry in this 365-day devotional features Scripture verses in which God speaks, accompanied by insights and applications to enhance your understanding. Learn what God says about hope and fear; perseverance and quitting; companionship and isolation; and more! 384 pages, softcover from Nelson, Copyright 2010.

Good Times Are Coming

"Never again will there be in [Jerusalem] an infant who lives but a few days, or an old man who does not live out his years; he who
dies at a hundred will be thought a mere youth; he who fails to reach a hundred will be considered accursed.
They will build houses and dwell in them; they will plant vineyards and eat their fruit.
No longer will they build houses and others live in them, or plant and others eat.
For as the days of a tree, so will be the days of my people; my chosen ones will long enjoy the works of their hands.
They will not toil in vain or bear children doomed to misfortune; for they will be a people blessed by the LORD, they and their
descendants with them.
Before they call I will answer; while they are still speaking I will hear.
The wolf and the lamb will feed together, and the lion will eat straw like the ox, but dust will be the serpent's food.
They will neither harm nor destroy on all my holy mountain," says the LORD. - Isaiah 65:20—25 NIV

People had lived in the dark for a long time. But the dawn finally came. The last of Isaiah's prophecies predicted new heavens and a new earth, a time when weeping would cease, when infants would not die, when people would live well into old age, when they would build houses, plant vineyards, and harvest the fruit, keeping it all for themselves instead of giving it to others.

When we read that God told his people about the "new heavens and a new earth" (Isaiah 65:17 Mv), we are tempted to imagine that God was talking about the eternal kingdom. When we read about the wolf and the lamb feeding together, the lion eating straw, and dust becoming the food of serpents, it is hard to think of anything else but the kingdom. But between those words that sound like the kingdom, God said that those who died at a hundred were dying young. God spoke about babies being born. Neither death nor birth seems to fit the usual notion about the kingdom of heaven. So what are we to make of the passage?

Are the blessings of the passage literal, or are they figurative? A clue comes from remembering that God chose to speak in poetry. This passage expressed the hope that was to come when God finally reigned in the lives of his people. The serpent eating dust reminds us of the curse in Genesis. God proclaimed victory over that old curse. The kingdom of heaven lives in our hearts. No matter what the world may throw at us today, God still reigns there.