Today’s scripture reading is Isaiah 61.
The spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me; he has sent me to bring good news… -Isaiah 61:1 NRSV
Back in the 1980s, there was a movie released called “The Trip to Bountiful.” It was a story of an elderly woman who wanted to visit her childhood home of Bountiful, Texas before she died. What she didn’t know is that the town disappeared long ago due to the Great Depression. When her children wouldn’t let her go, she boarded a bus to make the trip herself. She finally made it to Bountiful, only to find the town deserted and dilapidated, nothing like she remembered it.
Today’s scripture was likely written some seventy years after Jewish people had been forced by Babylonian armies to leave their homeland. But the Babylonians were ultimately defeated by the Persians and their king, Cyrus the Great, allowed the exiled Jewish families to return home.
Because seventy years had passed, many of those returning to Jerusalem had never before seen their homeland. They were either infants when the exile occurred or had been born after the exile. I’m guessing their parents had told them stories about Jerusalem in all its glory. But when these children and grandchildren finally got to see it, Jerusalem (like Bountiful) was a shell of its former self, not at all like what they had been told.
Enter the prophet Isaiah. He had a word from the Lord for the people returning from exile. He assured them that Jerusalem would be restored to its former glory; it wouldn’t remain deserted and dilapidated forever.
Jesus later quoted these same words of Isaiah during his ministry. It was his way of reminding people that God’s intention remains to bind up the brokenhearted, release those who are imprisoned, and comfort those who mourn, to restore and redeem.
If your life isn’t what you remember or what you think God intends, may God grant you the grace to hear today’s scripture with hope.
