“For I will restore health to you, and your wounds I will heal, declares the LORD, because they have called you an outcast: ‘It is Zion, for whom no one cares!’ ” Jeremiah 30:17 I love this declaration of God. His recognition that outsiders mock His people, believing them to be abandoned. His unequivocal statement […]
“For thus says the LORD: When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will visit you, and I will fulfill to you my promise and bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, declares the LORD, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give you a future […]
“For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God…And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly […]
“Then you will know that I am the LORD; those who wait for me shall not be put to shame.” Isaiah 49:23b This statement is made at a time when the Lord’s abandonment seems clear. The grief and emptiness of His people feel unending. The outlook of Israel is seen in verse 14: “But Zion […]
“From of old no one has heard or perceived by the ear, no eye has seen a God besides you, who acts for those who wait for him.” Isaiah 64:4 “The threshing floors shall be full of grain; the vats shall overflow with wine and oil. I will restore to you the years that the […]
“And when all these things come upon you, the blessing and the curse, which I have set before you, and you call them to mind among all the nations where the LORD your God has driven you, and return to the LORD your God, you and your children, and obey his voice in all that […]
“You shall set apart three cities for yourselves in the land that the LORD your God is giving you…This is the provision for the manslayer, who by fleeing there may save his life. If anyone kills his neighbor unintentionally without having hated him in the past…he may flee to one of these cities and live, […]
“Why will you still be struck down? Why will you continue to rebel? The whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint. From the sole of the foot even to the head, there is no soundness in it, but bruises and sores and raw wounds; they are not pressed out or bound up or […]
In Pleasant Places 