Your builders outdo your destroyers, and those who laid you waste go away from you… Surely your waste and your desolate places and your devastated land-surely now you will be too crowded for your inhabitants, and those who swallowed you up will be far away. Isaiah 49: 17, 19, NRSV.
Heavenly Father, we all stand in need of Your restoration. Speak to our hearts Your Words of peace and liberation. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
Today we will continue with the theme, “God Restores.” In this chapter, in its immediate context, God is speaking both to the prophet and to His people. Their captors have carried away their children; broken down their walls, their cities lay waste. I imagine they are feeling “undone,” hopeless. In the midst of this feeling of hopelessness, comes God’s words of encouragement: “Your builders outdo your destroyers!” In the Twenty-first Century, we can seek its application to our situations as well.
I looked at other translations of our text of meditation, and made some interesting discoveries. The first half of the text, in some translations, is quite different from the translation we used: “Soon your descendants will come back” (NLT). “Your sons hasten back” (NIV). “Thy children shall make haste” (KJV). Emphasis provided.
One of the translations combined the idea of children, or descendants, with that of builders: “Your children and your builders make haste (AMP – Amplified Bible). Other translations that were similar to the NRSV were: “Your builders hurry” (NASB). “Your builders are faster than your wreckers” (The Message). What they all have in common, however, is the idea of swiftness (soon, hasten, haste, hurry, faster).
This is the concept we will be looking at as we continue to unpack our text of meditation. The idea of immediateness is an idea that appeals to us as human beings. We like things to be done without delay. Waiting is not a comfortable feeling for most of us. So if God is going to help us, He had better “hurry!” If one relationship did not work out, we enter another one right away. The thought behind this behavior is, that this new relationship, will help us to forget the old one.
We do not want to feel the pain of separation which comes with remembering. We shun pain as much as we can, for as long as we can. But the truth of the matter is, that a pain that is repressed, is most likely to re-surface; and when that happens, it tends to manifest itself in some unseemly, or unexpected ways. We become aggressive with people who have done nothing to deserve our wrath. We weep for no apparent reason. You will notice I used the term “apparent,” not, “no reason.” That is because I personally believe, that everything we do, is for “a reason.” It may not be for the reason we, or someone else, believe it is for; but there is always a reason behind our actions.
So we enter another relationship in order to numb the pain of the former relationship; carrying all the baggage of that first relationship! It is almost as if we were setting ourselves up, to be let down again! God says to us, I will administer a balm to your wound, in less time than it took to dissolve that relationship that is causing you so much pain! In other words, you do not need to rush; I am already healing you! “Before you call I will answer,” and while the prayer is still on your lips, I will have already heard you (Isaiah 65: 24).
Give God the damage that the destroyer has caused. I guarantee you, my God can fix it!