Confidence and Hope
These days, many Christians worldwide can identify with Isaiah’s “suffering servant.” In reading news headlines, people who stand up for truth, justice, and the flourishing of all people often bear the brunt of violence from powerful forces and people who act for personal gain, wealth, and influence. In many places, obedience to God’s call of teaching and sustaining “the weary with a word,” is met with opposition, confrontation, and harassment.
It’s easy to become weary of all the troubles that surround us. It feels better to turn off the news and retreat into solitude or the comfort of Christian community. But in this passage, God’s servant bravely wakes each day with ears open to God’s call and the plight of the suffering. The literal and thematic centre of Isaiah 50 is verse 6. Christians see Jesus as the suffering servant who paid the cost of being faithful to God. In the face of the abuse and pain that the servant’s enemies inflicted upon him, he demonstrated a holy courage that was not self-preserving, but self-giving. Jesus lived in the centre of his Father’s will and yet he was not protected from experiencing suffering. However, like Isaiah’s suffering servant, Jesus counted on God’s help and vindication of him when his adversaries confronted him (vv. 7-9).
With a deep trust in God’s abiding presence, Jesus engaged the powers, authorities, and forces of injustice, both seen and unseen. On the cross he gave voice to all humanity’s lament over God’s absence in time of need. But in the end, he still commended his life and spirit into God’s hands (Luke 23:46).
The encouragement we find in these verses is that as we open ourselves to listen to God’s wise instruction, and sustain others with what we learn, God will help us. And in those times when our obedience results in suffering and we feel alone in it, we can call out to the One who walks alongside us and never leaves us. God’s help is the source of our confidence and our hope in the midst of suffering.
Where in your life do you need confidence and hope?
Oh God, teach us to trust that you remember us, hear our cries, bend down to us, and will never leave our side. May my face be set like flint to obey your direction. I trust in your unfailing love. Amen.
Sumarme Goble