Thanks to Christopher Burns on Unsplash - https://unsplash.com/@christopher__burns
"...in all their distress. It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old." - Isaiah 63:9 (NRSV)
This is the personal involvement of God in the distress of His people.
We continue to celebrate Christmas on the Christian calendar and in life, the message of the incarnation is one of God's personal involvement in the pain and passion of people.
It is our clarion call to be personally involved, with passion in the pain around us ... present.
We must be present for God is present.
We cannot stand back and gaze upon suffering and injustice with nods and sneers and detached prayers. Our prayers must to attached to our lives and the lives of others.
Isaiah will be read in churches across the world this Sunday, the first Sunday after Christmas. We will praise God from Psalm 68. We will be taught from Hebrews 2 that it was fitting for our champion to be made perfect through sufferings to bring many sons to glory. We will see this lived out as the homeless Jesus becomes a refuge in a foreign land, an alien among a strange people.
Personal involvement. What will you touch in the coming year?