For today, One Year Bible Online links here.

    Do not think that the wicked have things better than you, do not wish that you had their life. Do not seek out their company or attempt to become their companions. The wicked are plotting violence against even their companions and they say things for the purpose of causing trouble.

    God is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows. He places the lonely among those who will be family to them. He sets prisoners free and gives them joy. We read this and think how marvelous the things which God does by His miraculous power, and we are not wrong. God does do these things by miraculous power. However, there is a reason that Christ founded the Church. So that we can do these things. We are called to be a father to the fatherless and to defend widows. It is we who God has called to be family to the lonely and to show the prisoners how to be free. Let us praise God for what He has done and serve Him as He calls us to do.

    As I read this passage I am reminded of something that I, and too many others, forget most of the time. I seek to serve God, but that is not really to my credit. I do not deserve to be allowed to serve God. It is to God’s credit that He is not only willing to have me serve Him, but calls me to do so. If I was in God’s position, I find it hard to imagine that I would allow someone like me to work for me, let alone go out of my way to ask them to do so. Yet, that is what God has done. If I were to exhaust myself every day doing God’s will every waking moment, that in itself is more reward than I deserve. When I think of the tasks which God has asked me to do for Him, I fall to my knees and thank Him.
    As I think of this and read the rest of what Paul wrote here, it just amazes me. God’s power is at work in me, undeserving as I am, to accomplish more than I can ask for (and I can ask for a lot). Not only will God’s power do more through me than I can ask for, it will do more than I can imagine (and I have a very vivid imagination). What a great God we serve, who not only allows us to serve Him, but calls us to do so. And beyond even that, He is able to bring glory to His name through us. That in itself exceeds my ability to imagine. How can my actions, as selfish and flawed as I am, bring glory to God? Yet, He promises that they will.

    Isaiah tells us that God has chosen to blot out our sins and hold them against us no longer, not because we have done something to deserve such forgiveness, but solely because He chooses to do so. All we have to do to know that such is the case is review our own lives. How can anything we have done offset the evil we have done? Despite our problems and our weaknesses, He has called us to declare before the world that we are His, and glory to God, some are willing to do so.
    Isaiah goes on to talk about the foolishness of idols. How foolish it is for someone to take a tree, burn part of it for fuel, yet carve part of it into something they worship as a god capable of providing for their needs. I have friends who are professing pagans. They know there is nothing to the gods they worship, yet they choose to worship them anyway. They admit that they do so because they cannot live in a world that is nothing but what can be seen, heard, touched, smelled, and/or tasted. Despite this, they refuse to worship the Creator.
    Finally, Isaiah speaks of why God calls up certain world leaders, leaders who do not acknowledge Him. God called Cyrus and raised him to power, easing his path to world domination for the sake of His people. Time and again through history, God has raised up leaders to accomplish His purposes, to bring relief from suffering to those whom He calls His own. Those leaders have not chosen to serve God, yet God has chosen them to serve Him.