A Message from Head of School, Tom Argersinger
Merry Christmas Parents and Friends of CCS,
”Shout for joy, you heavens! Earth rejoice! Mountains break into joyful shouts!
For the LORD has comforted His people, and will have compassion on His afflicted ones.”
Is. 49: 13 CSB
How amazing that the thing that causes the entire Creation to break into exuberant joy and shout-songs is not the arrival of material riches, physical healing or governmental solutions to our issues, but rather it is YAHWEH the Self-Existent One comforting His people with great compassion for our afflicted state i.e. our brokenness, alienation and mourning.
Like Zion (Israel) in this passage from Isaiah we who are weary and broken cry out in response:
‘…The LORD has abandoned me; the Lord has forgotten me!”
Our flesh (our old, false, unredeemed self) is quick to forget, or rather ignore, the facts of the situation. Our pain blinds us to the repercussions of the most glorious Truth the world has ever known — the incarnation and subsequent atoning death and resurrection of the Son of God, Jesus Christ.
How ironic (and how like the enemy of our souls, Satan, to encourage) that we focus on ourselves in the midst of great pain — a very human reaction — and fail to engage with the one Truth that will make the greatest difference in our lives.
Yet God is indeed a gracious God, and in response to Israel’s lack of faith and trust He shares not a rebuke, but perhaps the most beautiful analogy in the entire Bible:
“Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you. (emphasis mine).
Is. 49:15 CSB
The great “I AM”, our Father God, chooses the most intimate of analogies, one that everyone in the world can relate to, a mother and her baby.
O the intimacy that we miss if we hurry over these beautiful words! How our souls need to hear this today!
The Creator and Sustainer of the whole Universe stoops incredibly far down to His sinful, wayward, ungrateful and untrusting children, and brings the unfathomable assurance that our souls long to hear.
I know. I hear. I’m not too busy for you — I will not forget you.
And if that is not enough to convince us, He continues with another analogy:
“Look, I have inscribed you on the palm of my hands…”
Is. 49:16 CSB
One cannot help but recall the nail-scared hands/wrists of our Lord Jesus that He showed His first disciples (and to us) as proof of His love.
And dear afflicted one, that great, unfathomable love is available right now to you (yes, even you) no matter how difficult your situation is.
The Reality is that God “has” you, and He will not let you go. So turn to Him, run to Him, give Him your worry and your pain and your disillusionment.
Better to be honest, and receive the grace He is offering you, the peace and power and provision of His presence, than to continue the exhausting fight against Him and what He wants to accomplish in and through your life.
The process is not easy — but the reward is literally indescribable.
I encourage you to read and meditate on the whole of Isaiah 49 in the lead-up to Christmas, and allow God’s promises to Israel echo in your own hearts. I believe that practice will bring a greater richness to your reading of the Jesus story revealed in the New Testament.
May God bless you and your families this Christmas with the most beautiful surrender to the One who made you, and holds you, and will never let you go no. matter.what.