For this is what the LORD says: “I will extend peace to her like a river, and the wealth of nations like a flooding stream;
you will nurse and be carried on her arm and dandled on her knees.” Isaiah 66:12
The people were shattered after the destruction of the temple and the sacking of Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 587 BC. The prophet Isaiah had to change their whole way of thinking. They’d wanted to be a successful powerhouse of a nation, able to dominate the neighbouring countries. That hadn’t happened for 4 centuries, since the time of David, but that dream was hard to let go of.
Now God was replacing that with a new image – being a mothering city that would welcome all sorts of children into God’s peace. That is still a picture for what God’s church is and it is vital that we remember that and reflect on it.
In Christmas 1942 the German army was surrounded in Stalingrad, and they knew they could not break free. Over 2 million soldiers from both sides would die in the fighting. It was a stark and terrible time in minus 30C. Kurt Reuber was both a pastor and a doctor and had been conscripted in 1939. He was also an artist. In charcoal, on the back of a map, he started to outline Mary holding her baby snugly. On the side he wrote Light, Love, Life.
On Christmas Eve the troops sang Silent Night, then in ones and twos walked into the little bunker where there was a light burning in front of the Madonna in the darkness. They were all profoundly impacted as they looked at Mary with her face up against the Christ child. For a time they experienced hope and love, before stepping back into their living hell.
What ever you are experiencing, the Holy Spirit always has light, love and life for you. Let go older images of yourself, or ideas of how things should be. Let them go to God, and receive the promise of hope and new life for the situation you are now in. Ask god how you are to do this
