Sign of the Young Woman

Isaiah 7:10-14

King Ahaz and the people of Jerusalem were terrified of being destroyed by their enemies. Isaiah tells the king and his people that God will give them a sign of God’s presence. This sign is not a magical happening but one of the most ordinary and earthy of possibilities-”a young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel.” The name Immanuel means “God with us.” The birth of a baby boy was the reminder of God’s presence. When life situations terrify us, what are the signs of “Immanuel” in our lives? What are the simple yet profound reminders that God never leaves us alone?

PRAYER: Lord God, help us to know anew the meaning of Immanuel. Open our eyes and hearts to the signs of your love all around us as we anticipate the coming of the Christ Child. Amen.

Martha Osborne

Call of Isaiah

Isaiah 6:1-13

Today’s scripture paints a scary picture! Flying serpents, the whole house filled with smoke, unclean lips purged with hot coals-it’s enough to make the angels shake with fear. God is completely fed up with the people of Israel, God’s own chosen people! Just as if King Uzziah died only yesterday, we are those people who have hardened God’s heart.

We’ve forgotten who’s in charge. We think we know what we want and need more than God does. Off we go on our own to pursue fearful, lonely, ineffective, shallow lives! We need God; we need each other.

Like Isaiah, when we repent, we see the King. We want to be sent into a world waiting for so much healing, justice, and peace.

In that scorched tree stump, there’s a holy seed. Our God never gives up.

PRAYER: O God, use me to show your love that never dies. Amen.

Sherrill Terry

God Woos Israel

Hosea 2:14-23

Feminist that I am, sometimes I find the marriage husband-wife metaphor in Hosea troubling. But going beyond it yields a rich treasure. The marriage metaphor casts the relationship between God and God’s people not as some kind of contract but as a covenant, full of promise, compassion, and unwavering love. So often, we look anywhere but to God for meaning and comfort. But like a mad lover, God chases after us again and again and calls us back. God’s passionate pursuit of us and God’s promise of renewed love and a new day compel us. When our lives and the world around us offer trouble, pain, hardship, conflict, and brokenness, God’s committed love delivers, heals, and transforms. We can stand on the prophetic vision-God’s promise of peace and wholeness and hope: “I will make for you a covenant on that day; … and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety” (Hosea 2:18).

PRAYER: God of promise, lover of your people, you alone are the One who renews and restores. In the very fiber of our being, you claim us in your passion so that we belong to no one but you. May the fire of your love for us and the joy of your vision for us make us into your unwavering witnesses to hope and peace and wholeness in a broken world. Amen.
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Bettina Kilburn

Where is Justice?

Amos 5:1-27
“Let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream” (Amos 5:24). This verse appears on the fountain outside the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. Martin Luther King Jr. quoted this passage in his Letter from Birmingham Jail, in which he argued for the need to be a different kind of activist in the cause of justice. “The question is not whether we will be extremists,” he wrote, “but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice?”

And now, a month before Americans celebrate King’s legacy, that question is still relevant. There is still so much injustice, indifference, corruption and greed and addiction and spite in the world that it would be easy to give in to despair. Certainly, many of the voices we hear seem on the brink of despair. We see the way that powerful political and corporate interests seem poised to block the changes the world needs and the ways we too often find ourselves complicit with those interests.

PRAYER: God of justice, we all forget. We forget to love. We forget to listen. We forget to pray. We forget that we are not alone but that Amos’s words were spoken on behalf of a God who has not forgotten us. Amen.

Cindy Hays

Promise of “House”

2 Samuel 7:1-17

How often have we asked God for something, and his response was a yes wrapped inside a no? After some waiting, maybe even for years, we discovered God’s plan reached far higher and much wider than our own ideas. When you sense God rejects your request, wait. Something better is likely to happen.

For King David, God declined the king’s request to build a temple for the Ark of the Covenant. Instead, God not only promised David that his descendant Solomon would build the temple but also that the family would reign for generations and live in peace and pros- perity. And God’s ultimate answer through the lineage of David was Jesus, our Savior.

PRAYER: Forgive us in our haste. Overlook our needless worry and attention to bad counsel. Clear our minds and hearts as the Incarnation approaches. Amen.

Wade Medlock