Today's Scripture: Isaiah 48:17-19
"Oh that you had paid attention to my commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, and your righteousness like the waves of the sea."
If only.
How many times have you said those two words, or heard them from others? They're usually followed by something expressed in a regretful or wistful tone, as if to say, "what could have been."
It's really nothing new, though. One can easily imagine Adam and Eve saying, "If only we hadn't eaten the fruit from that one tree we would still have it easy!"
In today's passage, the Lord points out an "if only" for his people, and it even reads as if he expresses that same sense of regret as we do. In just a few words, the prophet Isaiah outlines the heart of our relationship with God.
The Lord is the one who sets us free from the slavery and bondage of sin and restores us into relationship with himself through faith in Jesus. In that relationship, he teaches us and leads us. He teaches us who he is, but also how to carry ourselves in this life. And, he leads us in the way we should go.
That's the ideal. The problem is, we don't always follow that way, and when we don't follow the Lord, we don't know what we miss out on. We don't know what could have been.
Which is why Isaiah compares what could have been for God's people like the river and the sea. Their peace could have been ever-flowing in the same way the river constantly flows and the waves constantly roll.
Here's the thing. We don't know what we're missing out on when we try to chart our own course according to where we want to go, instead of following the Lord and his course for our lives.
Maybe do a reset, and avoid those "if only"s.
Think about it …
- Has there been a time you've looked back on and realized you "missed out" because you didn't fully follow the way you should go as set by the Lord?
- What do you think led to that, and how might you prevent it as you follow God now?
