Isaiah 30:15, “In returning and in rest you shall be saved; and in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.”
When circumstances shatter the legs of Christ’s sheep, they do not rage at but rest on and trust in Him and so find salvation and strength–may it be so for us.
This picture comes directly out of my own experience over the last few weeks. Various external and internal events conspired to make me really despair of my own abilities to do this or that, or to be sufficient for this or that. As I prayed, the weight of these deficiencies and my absolute inability to fix them become so clear….it felt like I was a sheep with all four legs snapped and bound up in splints…..and that is when this image (informed by scriptures like the one cited above) came to mind.
Sure….we may feel like crippled sheep….and, in fact, we ARE crippled sheep….but that is precisely where we need to be….Because Christ died in weakness and was raised in power, the point where we collapse in weakness into the promises of who God is for us in the gospel is–by grace!–the point of “returning and rest” and “quietness and trust”….and that is where the Lord promises to give strength and salvation.
We boast in our weaknesses, as Paul says in 2 Corinthians 12:9, because it is precisely in those weaknesses–offered up to the Lord–that the crucified and risen Christ displays His strength.
So, as I said above, may this be true more and more for each one of us–amen!
