Old and alone?

“Then you will say in your heart,
“Who has borne me these?
I was bereaved and barren,
exiled and put away—
so who has reared these?
I was left all alone—
where then have these come from?”
Isaiah 49: 22

God's beautiful promise to Judah is that her exile is not forever, that her exile does not mean that she is forgotten and unloved, and that as a nation she is not on the brink of about extinction.

But I think that these words are not just meant for the the Judah of the 8th century B.C. They can, and are even meant to, comfort those of us who are growing older and now feel alone. For those who believe their children are gone; who believe in their loneliness that it is as if their children had died or never been born.

God promises that the day is coming when Judah looks around and says, "Where have all these come from?" We will do the same. Children will be united with parents and parents with children and grandchildren. We are not alone.

But there's more. It's not just about a physical family.

I think that the promise for us is that through the grace of our God, we, who believe that our lives have, in the end, been meaningless, that we have helped no one, that we have been completely useless, will find that, to our great surprise, we have countless spiritual children. The time is coming when we will all be scampering about, full of joy at our reunion, at last realizing just what we have meant to each other and what we have meant to Him and what He means to us.

And we will know that we are not barren, neither are we bereaved.