Choose Joyنموونە

DAY 26 - GO OUT IN JOY

Reflection: As we conclude our reflections on joy from Isaiah, we find the joy-strengthened life embedded in the words of God, relayed by the prophet, to people in exile, whose hearts are desperate for change.

The promise of going out in joy and being led by peace is for ‘all you who are thirsty’ and ‘have no money' (Isaiah 55:1 NIV) – in other words, those who recognise their need for God’s intervention.

The promise of the mountains bursting into song and the trees clapping their hands is for those who ‘seek the Lord while he may be found’, and for the wicked who ‘forsake their ways’. This life of abundant joy is for any who ‘turn to the Lord’ so that he can have ‘mercy on them’ and ‘freely pardon’ (Isaiah 55:6,7 NIV).

This desperation for the work of God in our lives is not a once-off, but a steady posture of humility, trust, and dependence, expressed in friendship with Jesus and, specifically, acknowledging his saving death and justifying resurrection.

Jesus is known as the Word of God, the same word by which everything is created. And the word in this passage that goes out from God to return to him with all of us, on the highway of the redeemed. Along the way, the hills are singing and the trees applaud, and joy is our song.

Choose joy: Acknowledge your desperate need for God. The longer we walk with Jesus, the more this should be apparent.