Scripture: (Isa 49:15-16 NKJV) "Can a woman forget her nursing child, And not have compassion on the son of her womb? Surely they may forget, Yet I will not forget you. {16} See, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; Your walls are continually before Me.
Observation: After Isaiah speaks of what God intends to do to punish Babylon and to free His people, he then writes about how God will restore His people, because He has never forgotten them. With longing God says, “Oh, that you had heeded My commandments! Then your peace would have been like a river, And your righteousness like the waves of the sea. {19} Your descendants also would have been like the sand, And the offspring of your body like the grains of sand; His name would not have been cut off Nor destroyed from before Me.” (Isa 48:18-19 NKJV) How much better they would have been, had they heeded God’s commandments. . .
In Chapter 49, God speaks some of the most tender words about His relationship with His children, even His wayward ones; those are the words of our text for today.
Application: I was blessed to be born to and raised by a very loving mother. She thought of and prayed for each of her six children until the day of her death. She sacrificed, worked hard, and did all she could to provide each with a warm, clean home, good, healthy food, and proper manners and education. She left her birth home as a young wife to raise her family with the husband of her youth, the father of her children. And after twenty-eight years of marriage, when she became a widow, she continued to work and look for ways to support her children still at home. At an age when others would be starting to look forward to retirement, she left her homeland, her life-long friends, and moved to the U.S. with her two younger children in order to provide them with the best opportunities for a successful future. At times she worked two jobs to support her two boys, cooked and cleaned for them, and saved what she could to help them and her other children now grown and married.
I read the words of God through Isaiah and understand it better because of my mother. She never forgot any of her six children, even while they grew up and were far removed from their days of nursing. Even while physically distant, and even when some of them seemed emotionally distant, she never stopped to have love and compassion for them. And yet the text says that even if for some strange reason my mother had forgotten any of us, God never would, never did.
Praise God for my mom! Praise God. . .!
A Prayer You May Say: I thank You, Father, for my mother and all the gifts of love, compassion, and care You gave me all wrapped up in her heart. I look forward to resurrection morning when we meet again to never be apart forever.
Used by permission of Adventist Family Ministries, North American Division of Seventh-day Adventists.
