Isaiah 41:14-20. Again, God tells Jacob to "Fear not," just like yesterday! I have had verses 14 to 16 before, in which God promises to make a threshing sledge of Israel and they will go thresh the mountains and hills and make them chaff. The reading today goes on to say that God will answer the poor and needy when they seek water and have none. He will open rivers on the bare heights, fountains in the valleys, and springs of water in the dry lands. He will put cedar, acacia, myrtle, and olive trees in the wilderness; cyprus and pine in the desert. Then men will see and know that "the hand of the Lord has done this, the Holy One of Israel has created it."

God loves to vindicate His people and He loves to care for them. Especially the poor and the weak. He lavishes His gifts on them in the most astonishing ways, so that all who see will have to know and admit that it is the Lord who has done this. God loves to show the world his love for His people!

So why, then, do the poor and the week have to be so to begin with? Why is there so much suffering? Because God first gives us the chance to live in harmony with each other, to share the bounty He has given us with all, in accordance with His laws and His ways. God wants us to treat each other this way - to hear the cry of the poor and answer it abundantly. But we often do not. We often get caught up in our own affairs, our own greed, our own sin, and we don't even see the poor at all. When we do, we figure someone else will take care of them.

God gives us time to wake up, but at some point, when we don't, He threshes us and answers the poor himself. And when He does it is bountiful and abundant and all who see it will know that it was God who acted!