Long term plan for our safety

 This week's verses are Isaiah 49:1-6:

Listen to me, you coastlands!
Pay attention, you people who live far away!
The Lord summoned me from birth;
he commissioned me when my mother brought me into the world.
He made my mouth like a sharp sword,
he hid me in the hollow of his hand;
he made me like a sharpened arrow,
he hid me in his quiver.
He said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, through whom I will reveal my splendor.”
But I thought, “I have worked in vain;
I have expended my energy for absolutely nothing.”
But the Lord will vindicate me;
my God will reward me.
So now the Lord says,
the one who formed me from birth to be his servant—
he did this to restore Jacob to himself,
so that Israel might be gathered to him;
and I will be honored in the Lord’s sight,
for my God is my source of strength—
he says, “Is it too insignificant a task for you to be my servant,
to reestablish the tribes of Jacob,
and restore the remnant of Israel?
I will make you a light to the nations,
so you can bring my deliverance to the remote regions of the earth.”

 In this week's verses, God speaks through the prophet Isaiah about his future plans for mankind. At the time when they had been written, years had passed since the people of Israel had been captured in a campaign of ethnic cleansing, and they had been forcibly relocated to far away regions of the ancient middle east. They were no longer able to sacrifice in the temple, like their faith commanded them to do, and gradually over time many began to have doubts that God was even looking out for them at all. So God sent prophets to encourage them, because this forced relocation was part of his long term plan.

In the part Isaiah is sharing here, God is predicting the birth of Jesus. Jesus is the servant through whom the glory of God will be revealed, made possible because of God's promise to Israel. By keeping his promise to Israel, God makes sure they will last until the day he arrives.

God's plan for Jesus was planned from the beginning and was announced centuries before his birth, though these verses. Jesus is the sharpened arrow, kept hidden in the quiver, meant to target even the far away Gentiles. He had plans to reach us, and he had plans to mold and position Israel in order to make it happen. Our salvation, and the appropriateness of Christianity for the whole world, is not something that was decided last minute. It was planned all along.

We don't live in a world that is at the mercy of random whims that pull us in different directions. History is more than just a series of lucky accidents. If we look, we can see God's hand bending history to bring us Jesus, and slowly bringing one nation at a time into contact with his church. Even the farthest, most isolated places, the islands and coasts Isaiah mentions, are introduced to Him in time.

Christianity is the right path, not just for us, but for everyone. And we can take encouragement from these verses. Just as God urged Israel not to give up hope or become discouraged, especially when it seemed they were abandoned, we should not give up hope for those areas of our lives that seem hopeless. And just as God talks about vindication after having the feeling of wasting energy for nothing, we should expect God to bank a reward for us for the goodness we do that seems wasted.

So, seeing how careful and intricate God's plans were for welcoming us to his kingdom, even hundreds or thousands of years in advance, we can rest assured that God is still in control, that he has a plan for our lives, and that he has not left the world entirely up to chance.