{"id":5096,"date":"2014-03-04T00:05:38","date_gmt":"2014-03-04T08:05:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/?p=5096"},"modified":"2014-03-03T23:21:24","modified_gmt":"2014-03-04T07:21:24","slug":"can-he-forget-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/2014\/03\/04\/can-he-forget-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Can He Forget You?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shout for joy, O heavens;
\nrejoice, O earth;
\nburst into song, O mountains!
\nFor the LORD comforts his people
\nand will have compassion on his afflicted ones.
\nBut Zion said, \u201cThe LORD has forsaken me,
\nthe Lord has forgotten me.\u201d
\n\u201cCan a mother forget the baby at her breast
\nand have no compassion on the child she has borne?
\nThough she may forget,
\nI will not forget you!
\nSee, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
\nyour walls are ever before me.
\nYour sons hasten back,
\nand those who laid you waste depart from you.
\nLift up your eyes and look around;
\nall your sons gather and come to you.

\nAs surely as I live,\u201d declares the LORD,
\n\u201cyou will wear them all as ornaments;
\nyou will put them on, like a bride. (Isaiah 49:13-18)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In the midst of our problems, in the dankness of our dungeon, it is impossible to see anything bright. We feel nothing but our pain, we see nothing but the oppressive darkness, we feel nothing but the walls closing in on us. The heaven\u2019s are brass, we\u2019re alone and nothing is getting better. There is no warmth, only the bitter cold of the moment.<\/p>\n

In that impossible instant of Israel\u2019s pending destruction, God reassured his people that he had not forgotten them. He compared his suffering people to an infant in its mother\u2019s arms. The infant might be crying, wailing, hungry, fearful. In its small, undeveloped mind, all it knows is the pain of its empty belly, the dark night surrounding it. But its mother can hardly forget her child, can hardly not feel compassion for its suffering. Likewise, God was there, offering comfort and hope as they left for exile in Assyria or Babylonia. <\/p>\n

God had not gone away, his people were no further away from him in a foreign land than they had ever been. God was not insensitive to their pain, he had not forgotten them. In fact, all they had to do was calm down, look around, and realize that everything was going to be okay. What was lost was being restored. The broken places were being repaired. It really would all be okay. <\/p>\n

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Shout for joy, O heavens; rejoice, O earth; burst into song, O mountains! For the LORD comforts his people and will have compassion on his afflicted ones. But Zion said, \u201cThe LORD has forsaken me, the Lord has forgotten me.\u201d … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_s2mail":"yes"},"categories":[18,17,16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5096"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5098,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5096\/revisions\/5098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5096"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5096"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nettelhorst.com\/blog1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5096"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}