Isaiah 18:4: “For so the LORD said to me, / ‘I will take My rest, / And I will look from My dwelling place / Like clear heat in sunshine, / Like a cloud of dew in the heat of harvest.'”

August 12th, 2024 by Pastor Ed in devotional

Isaiah tells us that God waits patiently for the correct moment to intervene in human affairs. Like sunshine and rain coming at the appropriate time, so God will come to judge the earth at the right time, according to His view. The Apostle Paul wrote in Galatians 4:4–5: “But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption as sons.”

Way back in the Garden of Eden, when Adam and Eve first sinned, God gave a promise of a coming Savior, which He reiterated time after time through the prophets. He promised that He would not leave the earth under the curse, but would send a deliverer, someone to make a way back to Eden and a restored relationship with God. And in God’s timing, “when the fullness of the time had come,” God sent Jesus. And it was His death and resurrection that opened the road back to Eden. We live in the gap between The First and The Second Coming of Jesus Christ. It is right now that humanity can come back into a relationship with God, which Jesus secured. Today, right now, is the time of decision.

There is an interesting story about a friend of the poet Robert Frost who was incapable of making up his mind about anything. Just for the fun of it, Frost wrote a poem about the man’s waffling. But when he read it to a group of poets they both knew, Frost was astonished that no one thought it funny. Instead they were deeply moved by the power of his poem. Frost tried his joke again on a gathering of university students, but got the same response. No one thought “The Road Not Taken” was funny. This poem, which went on to become one of his best-known poems, was in fact the joke that no one got. He wrote of a New Hampshire yellow wood, where 2 roads branched off in different directions, forcing a traveler to choose between them. It ends with the traveler saying that he “took the one less traveled by, / And that . . . made all the difference.” The same choice awaits every person on the planet, but the time is limited. Have you chosen a road?

“LORD, we want to walk Your road today, knowing it is the road less traveled but the only one that leads to eternity with You.”