Day 7: Wonderful refreshment
This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says: “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength…" (Isaiah 30:15).
O God our Everlasting Father, our eternal Rock of Refuge, You alone reign over the affairs of humanity— God reigns over the nations; God is seated on His holy throne (Psalm 47:8).
You created the world, and all that is in. You created humans and You gave us choice; yet You have never relinquished Your sovereignty and supremacy: Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails (Proverbs 19:21). If it were not so, there would be many sovereigns, and we would be at the mercy of whatever evil would ascend and thrive, and assume dominion over us.
But it is not so. You have given many infallible proofs (Acts 1:3 - KJ21) of the truth You declared: "I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me" (Isaiah 46: 9). You have shown that You are the sovereign God by Your word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15), by the wonders of creation (Romans 1:20), by sustaining all things through Your powerful word (Hebrews 1:3), and by the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Your Son (Acts 2:22-36).
We have seen Your convincing proofs. We have seen Your ways. And by contrast, we have seen the ways, conventions and philosophies of this broken world— the greed, tyranny, and folly; the many purposes and cross purposes of competing powers and interests that threaten to consume us in total chaos and destruction.
But still we choose to reject the Truth, embodied in the Lord Jesus, and we embrace instead the thief and the robber (John 10:1), the liar and the father of lies (John 8:44). We still choose Barabbas, the one allied with the insurrectionists who had committed murder in the uprising (Mark 15:7).
And yet in love and mercy You hold out to all of us, who crucified the Lord of glory (1 Corinthians 2:8), Your grace-filled invitation in this, the time of Your favor:
Repent, then, and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out, that times of refreshing [wonderful times of refreshment - TLB] may come from the Lord, and that He may send the Messiah, who has been appointed for you—even Jesus (Acts 3:19-20).
Long ago, You pointed Your people to the way of deliverance and strength. But they would have none of it (Isaiah 30:15). May we not choose as they did. May we not choose the way of this world, the way of sin that will become... like a high wall, cracked and bulging, that collapses suddenly in an instant (Isaiah 30:13).
Help us to choose instead repentance and rest, quietness and trust. Help us to choose life, so that we and our children may live (Deuteronomy 30:19).
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