Everlasting Joy

This year you watched a friend get free of something: a debt, a hospital stay, or a marriage that was crushing her. You noticed she sings in the car again. And underneath your gladness you noticed something else, something closer to envy than you would like.

Isaiah 35 is a chapter about a road. Before the singing comes, there is a highway, and Isaiah describes it carefully: "it shall be called The way of holiness; the unclean shall not pass over it." He says, "No lion shall be there, nor any ravenous beast," and "the wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein." It is a road built for people who are not clever enough to find their own way. Then verse 10 names who walks on it: "And the ransomed of the LORD shall return." They are not the tough ones who fought their way out. They are the ones whose freedom was paid for by Somebody else.

Look at the details. Isaiah says they come "with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads," which pictures joy like a crown they did not make and do not have to hold in place. Then "they shall obtain joy and gladness," and the Hebrew word behind "obtain" means to overtake, to catch up with something that was ahead of you. And "sorrow and sighing shall flee away" uses the word for running away, the way an army breaks and flees.

Lord, we have been comparing. We looked at somebody else's freedom, did our own sums, and came up short, and we have not said that to anyone. If we are honest, part of what we envy is her singing, and we cannot make that happen in ourselves. We have stopped trying.

We have not paid our own way out of anything, and we never could. That is all we have to bring You this morning, and this chapter says it is exactly what makes us fit for the road. Ransom us, put us on that road, and let the singing come when it comes. Amen.

Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year two reading for day 119 is Turn Thou Us (Lamentations 5:21).

All 365 readings in Daily Manna