To Taylor my friend (and the rest of us who have endured trouble) — fear not my young friend. Long before any of us were born, you were chosen, written into the plan that Jesus set into motion. It is no mistake that you reached out tonight with an aching heart. The prayers of your friends are wrapped around you. When you first yielded to Jesus you were marked with the seal – the Spirit of God within you is that seal, a guarantee of your redemption (Ephesians 1:11-15).
God is closer to you than the air that’s around your body, he is the air in your lungs and gives life. Draw strength from the community of believers. Pepper showed me this verse and I smiled. It was helpful to me; I hope it’s helpful to all of us who are wrestling with the legacy of divorce.
God said — Although you have been forsaken and hated, with no one traveling through, I will make you the everlasting pride and the joy of all generations (Isaiah 60:15). Let us dissect this verse into three segments and take a deeper look. I think we can find an image of how it feels to be divorced.
Segment 1 — although you have been forsaken and hated. This is a tough beginning point. It speaks to the disenfranchised Israelites, pushed into a foreign land, unable to comprehend the change, unable to express the devastation. Let us be certain, this entire verse speaks about Jerusalem’s fall. But I think we can learn from this message and allow this message to speak about the families that have been disassembled by forces beyond our control.
The key Hebrew term in Segment 1 is (tachath) translated ‘have been forsaken’. Vines and Thayer’s suggest the term forsaking implies enduring an assortment of persecutions and trials that crush our spirit and disable our hope for the future. Yet, at the same time, the Hebrew term also hints we will eventually see prosperity, peace, and security arrive on the scene to replace our dejection and isolation. Tachath talks to us about experiencing life’s trouble but also includes the coming hope; peace will eventually arrive for the downtrodden who are enduring divorce.
Segment 2 — The emptiness and isolation created by divorce is visualized as ‘With no man traveling through’. This segment defines the level of disassembly we endure. Our lives become desolate, we feel abandoned, often our friends feel distant, some of our friends isolate themselves from us out of fear (guilt by association) or as a judgment towards us. Few people travel to our place to talk to us, to break bread with us, to let us know we are not alone. The end-result – we are alone.
Segment 3 — Yet God says to us — I will make you the everlasting pride and the joy of all generations. Goodness, this is a turn-around from the first part of this verse. This is absolute assurance God has a plan for us. We have not fallen through the cracks, we are not alone, we may be discarded or rejected by our friends as damaged goods, but God will stand by us – yesterday, now, tomorrow, forever. This is not about us or who we are, but because of who Jesus is. We will be restored.
Conclusion. It is dark now, but eventually we shall be lifted-up, we shall no longer be alone, desolate, and dejected. I used the word ‘shall’ with purpose. It is a contractive term, an enduring term, used in the legal culture to clearly define a statement as absolutely binding. We shall be a subject of joy from generation to generation because of our redemption granted by God. We shall be a first-class example of God’s grace and redemptive power when others thought we were lost in the desert forever. Therefore, my friend, let the grief process go its course; know that the sun will rise in the morning, God’s faithfulness will prevail in your life.
I choose Jesus.
Shalom Talk 