Daily Devotional • December 3
A Reading from Isaiah 1:21-31
21 How the faithful city
has become a prostitute!
She that was full of justice,
righteousness lodged in her—
but now murderers!
22 Your silver has become dross;
your wine is mixed with water.
23 Your princes are rebels
and companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe
and runs after gifts.
They do not defend the orphan,
and the widow’s cause does not come before them.
24 Therefore says the Sovereign, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel:
Surely I will pour out my wrath on my enemies
and avenge myself on my foes!
25 I will turn my hand against you;
I will smelt away your dross as with lye
and remove all your alloy.
26 And I will restore your judges as at the first
and your counselors as at the beginning.
Afterward you shall be called the city of righteousness,
the faithful city.
27 Zion shall be redeemed by justice,
and those in her who repent, by righteousness.
28 But rebels and sinners shall be destroyed together,
and those who forsake the Lord shall be consumed.
29 For you shall be ashamed of the oaks
in which you delighted,
and you shall blush for the gardens
that you have chosen.
30 For you shall be like an oak
whose leaf withers
and like a garden without water.
31 The strong shall become like tinder
and their work like a spark;
they and their work shall burn together,
with no one to quench them.
Meditation
Infidelity. The sanctity of marriage defiled by an affair. The imagery in Isaiah 1 is ever relevant. The story is all too common. Unfortunately, more and more people make excuses for unfaithfulness, but it seems God does not make excuses for the breaking of a covenant. One cannot justify adultery. However, lest we judge — and bring judgment upon ourselves — we must remember that the ground is level at the foot of the cross.
We have all been unfaithful. In our marriage ceremonies, we vow to love, comfort, honor and keep our spouses “in sickness and in health, and, forsaking all others, be faithful to her [or him] as long as [we] both shall live” and in our baptismal vows we “renounce all sinful desires that draw [us] from the love of God.” But, in our own strength, our love is tepid. We choose people-pleasing over loving God first. We cannot honestly read our passage in Isaiah without seeing ourselves reflected in Judah.
When we use the Prayer of Humble Access at the eucharistic feast, we acknowledge not to “presume to come to [his] Table… trusting in our own righteousness, but in [his] manifold and great mercies. [For] we are not worthy so much as to gather up the crumbs under [his] Table.” We come, rather, because he is “the same Lord whose property is always to have mercy.”
His mercy indeed is great, and the true beauty is that God loves us enough not to leave us in our unfaithfulness. Jerusalem, representing God’s people — identified as a prostitute in Isaiah 1 — is transformed to the New Jerusalem in Revelation: a faithful bride wearing the righteousness that can only come from Christ. In the end, his mercy triumphs. He is faithful, and he is making us faithful.
Melissa Amber Patton is a Pittsburgh native, a writer, and an M.Div. student at Trinity Anglican Seminary. She is currently the music leader at Mosaic Anglican Church in Imperial, Pennsylvania and is pursuing ordination with the Anglican Diocese of Pittsburgh.
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Daily Devotional Cycle of Prayer
Today we pray for:
The Diocese of Kiteto – The Anglican Church of Tanzania
All Souls’ Church, Oklahoma City
