I am using One Year Bible Online for my daily Bible study. For today, One Year Bible Online links here. I have found that by writing this daily blog of what I see when I read these scriptures, I get more out of them. I hope that by posting these ruminations others may get some benefit as well. If you have any thoughts or comments regarding these verses or what I have written about them, please post them.
Isaiah tells us that God has done great things to save Israel in the past and is about to do even greater things. Yet for all that, Israel refuses to ask God for help. Nevertheless God is going to forgive their sins. He will lead them to follow Him. He will pour out His Spirit on them and they will proudly declare that they are His. God has done great things for me and all too often I do not ask for His help. I try to do things on my own without God’s help. I do not worship Him as I should. Yet, He has blotted out my sins and poured out His Spirit upon me.
Paul tells the Ephesians that if they read his letter, they will be able to understand the mystery of Christ, which God had revealed to Paul. This was a mystery which had not been revealed to previous generations. Now God has chosen to reveal it through His apostles and prophets. Paul was given the gift of being the one whom God chose to spread His message to the Gentiles, not because of any merit on Paul’s part but because of God’s grace to Paul. This mystery, which Paul was commissioned to preach to the Gentiles, was that God has chosen to join together all peoples in His Church through Christ Jesus. Jesus offers us the opportunity to approach God in freedom and confidence, despite our many sins.
Paul prays that the Ephesians will be rooted in love and thus have the power to grasp the immensity of Christ’s love which is beyond the extent of human knowledge to encompass. The metaphor of being rooted reminds me of the plants which I grow, especially those I grow in pots. I have several that I have been growing for several years. Every so often I have to take them out of the pot and trim the roots back because they grow out and start to tangle themselves up as they grow searching for water. If I wait too long to do this it becomes hard to do because the roots grow through the holes in the bottom of the pot that provide drainage. In the same way that these roots grow out searching for water, our souls reach out looking for love. If we root our lives in God’s love and remember to base all of our actions on love, we will find that God will grant us great power.
Let us sing praises to God, who is a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows. He will provide the lonely with families. God knows our needs and supplies them. His power is such that the weak are able to plunder the treasures of the armies of His enemies. It is not through our power that God is victorious. God has been victorious and will live among us.
We should not be envious of the wicked or desire to be their companions because they plot violence and stir up trouble (which will often rebound upon them and the people around them).