Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“No more shall there be in it
an infant that lives but a few days,
or an old person who does not live out a lifetime;
for one who dies at a hundred years will be considered a youth,
and one who falls short of a hundred will be considered accursed.”
NL Daily Devotion for Wednesday, December 18, 2024
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
I know women who have lost infants. Miscarried. Stillborn. Alive a matter of hours. Alive for almost three years before succumbing to a birth defect. There is a grief so deep it cannot be measured. And it never goes. Every year on the anniversaries, they struggle.
I know people who have lost parents way too young. Cancer. Accidents. Seemingly random and catastrophic medical occurrences. The mark on these people—sometimes children, sometimes young adults when their parents died—is profound. And it never goes. Every year on the anniversaries, they struggle.
One can only marvel at these words of promise from Isaiah, that there will come a time when such natural conditions, so devastating, will no longer happen. Is it a literal time? An earthly time? A post-end-of-time time? I’m sure I won’t know in my own lifetime. But I trust that it is God’s desire that we live fully and joyfully, and I will live in that hope for all my days.
What griefs have I experienced or witnessed? What does this promise of Isaiah mean to me?
