Starting in chapter 40, the book of Isaiah changes dramatically - from a book that warns people about an exile in the future to a book that comforts people about a captivity that's already happening, and promises people a deliverance that's just beginning. This is what's happening, nine chapters later.

This is what the LORD says:

  I will answer your prayers

    because I have set a time when I will help by coming to save you.

  I have chosen you to take my promise of hope to other nations.

  You will rebuild the country from its ruins,

    then people will come and settle there.

  You will set prisoners free from dark dungeons to see the light of day.

  On their way home, they will find plenty to eat, even on barren hills.

  They won't go hungry or get thirsty;

    they won't be bothered by the scorching sun or hot desert winds.

  I will be merciful while leading them along to streams of water.

  I will level the mountains and make roads.

    Then my people will return from distant lands in the north and the west

      and from the city in the south.

  Tell the heavens and the earth to celebrate and sing;

    command every mountain to join in the song.

  The LORD's people have suffered, 

    but he has shown mercy and given them comfort.

And how else could that delivered people respond? With joy? with peace? with gratitude?

  The people of Zion said, "The LORD has turned away and forgotten us."

"But your deliverance is just beginning! People who have been in captivity all their lives are going home! They will rebuild the devastated country they (or their parents, or even grandparents) left behind seventy years ago. Why would you give up in despair NOW?"

  The LORD answered, "Could a mother forget a child who nurses at her breast?

    Could she fail to love an infant who came from her own body?

  Even if a mother could forget, I will never forget you.

    A picture of your city is drawn on my hand.

  You are always in my thoughts!

We may be ready to give up on God, but God is focused on us - and God is just gettng started.

"... is drawn on my hand ..." We use the wrong technology today to understand this passage. We use pens and ink to draw. That washes off (BAD!). The Babylonians used cuniform picturegraphs. You take a stylus and carve into wet clay, and then the clay is fired as pottery. Those pictures do not wash off.

The way I read this passage, we are carved on God's hand in a way that will never wash off, and God will always remember us, every time he sees that carving.

This week, please keep these in your prayers:

- Georgie, in rehab and doing well,

- friends who have learned they will be mommies,

- graduating seniors and the end of the school year, and

- Laura, Linda, and Megan, (college, seminary, and college),

And have a GREAT week! Christ lives in you,

Spencer the wonder hamster