Restoration
by Chelsea Pietsch
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‘[S]hare your food with the hungry and … provide the poor wanderer with shelter … clothe him, and [do not] turn away from your own flesh and blood’ (Isaiah 58:7).
In today’s reading, God reveals through the prophet Isaiah that he is most pleased when we love and serve those in need. God doesn’t leave us guessing who these people are. He names them. They are the hungry, the poor, the homeless, the unclothed. When we love and serve these people, we please him.
Serving the most vulnerable members of our community is not just about donating to our favourite charity, good though that is. We are also called to encounter such people in the flesh. Verse 7 says that when we ‘see’ them, we are to ‘share’, ‘provide’, and ‘clothe’. In other words, we are to come close to them and serve them with our very own hands and feet.
God also reminds us that, as we care for those in need, we are not to neglect the needs of our flesh and blood (see also 1 Timothy 5:8). These are among the very people he has called us to love and serve. Strangely, however, loving and serving members of our own family can be more challenging than loving and serving someone we have just met.
Sometimes we can find the company of our parents, children, or spouses too hard, so we decide to invest our Christian efforts elsewhere. We might pour our efforts into trying to save the world, but at the same time, neglect our very own families.
I wonder whether this is something you have experienced. Have you ever found yourself investing in someone else’s child while your own child falls behind? Perhaps you’ve focused on resolving some other family’s dispute but left a conflict within your family to fester. Or maybe you’ve called on an elderly friend but neglected to phone your parent or sibling.
As our reading from Isaiah tells us, we cannot turn a blind eye to the needs of our community. But we shouldn’t do this at the expense of our own families, the very people God has placed into our lives.
Ultimately it is Christ who will repair the brokenness of the world. Only he can quench the world’s thirst; only he can shine light into our darkness; only he can bring order to our chaos. But he invites us to participate in this restoration process, starting with the poor, the hungry, and our own families.
Dear Lord, thank you that you will make all things new. Equip us to be your hands and feet in this world, especially among those you have called us to serve. Amen.
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