Word for the day by Christian Education Forum
A Life
with a Message
Seek the Lord while he
may be found; call on him while he is near.” (6)
Walter
Brugemann writes, “A central theme of the Bible is covenant, the notion of
making commitments and keeping them, of making promises and fulfilling
them.” God extended his covenants, for example, to Noah, Abraham, Moses,
David, and to the people of Israel. In each of these instances, God
established and offers his covenant promises to his people, and God kept the
promises he made. Meanwhile, God’s people often failed to honor such
promises, adopting lifestyles that displeased God.
Isaiah
55 is centered on the theology of covenant where God promises covenant life to
the exiles of Israel. It is in the read passage that God is graciously
inviting and calling the exilic community to return to him and adopt a
covenantal lifestyle. Thus, the prophet is urging the people to return to God
in a right relationship because only in that relationship could they have new life;
only in that relationship could they live fully. We are also called to do
the same. We must remember that God mediated a new covenant in Jesus
Christ. It is in Christ that a new relationship between God and humans
was established. At its core, the new covenant is Jesus Christ
himself. He embodies everything the new covenant is. In himself, he
enables us to be reconciled to God. In Jesus Christ, we are given a new
basis for our relationship with God.
We
deserve to be eternally alienated from our holy God and therefore completely
separated from the joy of knowing him and experiencing his eternal
blessings. But the good news is that we don’t have to be eternally
alienated. Instead we can live in the joy of full harmony with God
because of Jesus Christ, specifically because of what he did for us in his
death and resurrection.
In this day and age, it is becoming increasingly difficult to live faithfully
in the covenant relationship that God desires. We live in an increasingly
capitalistic and materialistic society. We tend to rely on the comforts
of this world for our own well-being. We often succumb to the erroneous
objectives of the world instead of responding to God and forgetting what God
has graciously done for us that we break the covenantal relationship that he
offers. When we are satisfied by what the world offers, we forsake our
relationship with God. Such living denies the reality of the crucifixion and
the resurrection of Christ, because such living refuses to live in light of the
fact that Jesus died and rose so that we might enter into a new relationship
with our Creator.
Prayer: O Lord, help us to live in a right
relationship with you so that we may experience a new and meaningful life that
is pleasing in your sight. Amen.
Thought for the Day: It is not through
anything that the world offers that we can experience a renewed and meaningful
life; it is only through being faithful to the new covenant in Jesus Christ
that this is accomplished.
Rev.
Christopher Phil Daniel, St. Stephen’s M T C, New Jersey