Treasures in the Darkness (and the cold...)

Wow!  It is COLD!!!  We are always so taken aback by winter, as if it is a new phenomenon every year.  I continue to be so grateful to those who went before us, the poor pioneers who had no heat, no warm homes.  I really don't know how they survived!

I can't believe how my kids will go outside even in this windy weather.  They'll bundle up and take out the sleds and whip down the little hill we have outside.  But I'm even grateful for that.  That little hill is the perfect size!  Not too steep to kill you, but enough of a slope to go fast on an icy trail.  My six year old loves it!

Ok still in Isaiah, but not in chapter 45.  It just seems to be about Jesus entering into this world simply to do the impossible.  The chapter begins with God choosing to use Cyrus, a pagan king, to be His instrument to free the Jews from their captivity.  This is an amazing passage because Cyrus isn't even alive when it was written!  It is a prophetic passage written 150 years before Cyrus is even born...

"Thus says the Lord to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have grasped, to subdue nations before him and to loose the belts of kings, to open doors before him that gates may not be closed...

And though this is a prophetic passage, I take so much comfort from it as well.  There are so many phrases that jump out at me, such as, "whose right hand I have grasped".  God reaches out and grabs hold of us, even if we don't want Him, too!  God then tells Isaiah what Cyrus will do, "subdue nations before him" and he'll "loose the belts of kings".  He'll also "open doors before him".  This is a list of thing that are not easy to do!  Yet the way it is written it just sounds so matter-of-fact.  I take heart in regularly bringing my list of impossible things for God to do and I know none of those things are impossible for God.  He freed the Jews from their captivity.  Can't He free us as well?

Isaiah continues, "I will go before you and level the exalted places." (45:2)  Cyrus didn't know that God was going before him, but I know.  He goes before all of us.  And the picture I get in my mind of leveling exalted places is that God takes down the barriers in front of us.  The next few verses says this, too,

"I will break in pieces the doors of bronze and cut through the bars of iron, I will give you the treasure of darkness and the hoards in secret places" (45:3)

This has to be my favourite verse of the week.  I've been saying the key phrases to the kids and RM all the time, "treasures in the darkness", "breaking doors of bronze", "cutting bars of iron".....Yes, it was to Cyrus, speaking of how God was going to use him, but does this not speak of what God can do in anyone's life?  And, once again, the picture are of the impossible.  Doors of bronze?  Bars of iron? Treasures in the darkness?  But that is exactly what God can do and, just like in Isaiah, God can use even a pagan king, or a secular job, or a difficult situation, or the most obscure unlikely "whatever", to break our own doors of bronze and bars of iron.

We are constantly seeing treasure in the darkness.  In our time of being stretched these few years, we've only seen God's blessing, His many treasures.  So often that is how it is...through the darkness we see the light even brighter.

So yes, it was a passage for Cyrus, but it spoke to me as well.

Now my boys are off to the barn where they will turn on a heater to warm up our frozen pipes, but this should be the last of that.  The final insulation should fix all wrongs this weekend.  The treasure in the darkness in this situation?  Perhaps that my boys will learn how to fix broken things, they will learn to do hard things, they will be kind to their own families and learn to take care of their own places one day.....one day....right now they aren't loving it and the cold too much!