Your Joy Meets the World's Pain
January 15, 2019
by Alex Kirk
Category: The Connect Devotional
[Jesus] stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was handed to him. Unrolling it, he found the place where it is written:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
20 Then he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant and sat down. The eyes of everyone in the synagogue were fastened on him. 21 He began by saying to them, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing.”
-Luke 4:16-21
Jesus knew his mission. He knew why he was here. He knew what he was here to do. It was utterly compelling and joy-giving for him—something he was willing to give his life for.
And it’s been utterly transformative and compelling to the rest of the world for the past 2,000 years.
Good news to the poor. Freedom for the prisoners. Sight for the blind. Oppressed go free. The year of the Lord’s favor rings out with good news for people in the margins and who are often overlooked in society.
Jesus’s original hearers would have likely felt an intuitive connection with this passage.
The book of Isaiah was a favorite and well-known piece of Scripture. Most of the people that Jesus was addressing lived a subsistence lifestyle, impoverished by today’s standards. And they had been an over-run, occupied people for hundreds of years—imprisoned as a nation by one foreign emperor, then another.
As we read Jesus’s mission statement, author Frederick Buechner has a fantastic quote worth pondering at the start of a new year: “Your vocation in life is where your greatest joy meets the world's greatest need.”
What are your joys? What are the needs you see around you? How might those meet in your life in a new way in this next season? |
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