Isaiah: chapter 66: Our heavenly mother

66:12-13 ‘I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream; you will feed and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees. As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem’

Here is one of a number of passages in the Bible where God is presented very clearly in feminine or motherly images (the two of course not being necessarily the same). (See for example Hosea 13:8; Deuteronomy 32:11-12, 18; Jeremiah 44:25; Psalm 131; Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34; and Luke 15:8-10).  In Isaiah 49:15 we have already read the following:

‘Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I will not forget you!’

All our travails and sufferings have a purpose and an outcome even if we do not grasp it when passing through various tunnels. At the end of this book or books of prophecy under the title of Isaiah we are left with a positive destination and promise not unlike the journey through the Book of Revelation. Isaiah tells us (66:22):

“‘As the new heavens and the new earth that I make will endure before me,’ declares the Lord, ‘so will your name and descendants endure.”

At the end of the book of Revelation we read:

‘Then I saw ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away.’

The very closing lines of the Christian Bible are as follows (Revelation 22:20-21):

‘He who testifies to these things says, ‘Yes, I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus. The grace of the Lord Jesus be with God’s people. Amen.’

One word – Amen. Let it be so.  Our heavenly mother is there to receive us. Already we see the rivers of peace flowing our way and carrying us forward.

#JourneyIsaiah