The Sovereign Lord Will Wipe Away

The Tears From All Faces

Lord, you are my God; I will exalt you and praise your name, for in perfect faithfulness you have done wonderful things, things planned long ago.

You have made the city a heap of rubble, the fortified town a ruin, the foreigners’ stronghold a city no more; it will never be rebuilt.

Therefore strong peoples will honor you; cities of ruthless nations will revere you.

You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in their distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat.

For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall and like the heat of the desert.

You silence the uproar of foreigners; as heat is reduced by the shadow of a cloud, so the song of the ruthless is stilled.

On this mountain the Lord Almighty will prepare a feast of rich food for all peoples, a banquet of aged wine— the best of meats and the finest of wines.

On this mountain he will destroy the shroud that enfolds all peoples, the sheet that covers all nations; he will swallow up death forever.

The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; he will remove his people’s disgrace from all the earth.

The Lord has spoken.

In that day they will say, “Surely this is our God; we trusted in him, and he saved us. This is the Lord, we trusted in him; let us rejoice and be glad in his salvation.”

Isaiah 25:1-9

Long before the discovery of penicillin, other silent killers were at work in our bodies saving lives by killing bacteria. Our white blood cells are hard workers and are God’s way of protecting us from disease. No one knows how many invasions they have stopped or how many lives they have saved. They receive little recognition for all the good they do.

The Lord gets similar treatment. He often gets blamed when something goes wrong, but He seldom gets credit for all the things that go right. Every day people get up, get dressed, drive to work or school, and return safely to their homes. No one knows how many times God has protected us. Then there is a tragedy and we all ask “Where was God?”

When we consider all the wonderful things that God does silently on our behalf each day, we can see our list of praises is much longer than our list of petitions.

God keeps giving us reasons to praise Him.

Our Daily Bread – August 16, 2015