The Message

Every week many of us devote a day of prayer to Arlene and others battling various illnesses. We have kind of found a common ground of prayer with Isaiah 53:5...by his stripes we are healed....I don't know how many weeks now I've posted that verse and it remains new to me every time.
This week I dug a little deeper into The Message, a contemporary language version of the Bible that is popular with youth. It was good for me to look at this passage again and find that the healing Isaiah talked about remains new and available.
I seem, lately, to be surrounded by people hurting in their bodies, minds and spirits. Battles are stretching in to weeks and months and years. I feel a little bruised myself. I am almost tired of it. Almost.
And then...I am healed. Of my weariness and discouragement I am delivered; so I'm back again. Too much was sacrificed for me to be defeated now.
Nor are you defeated Arlene. Or Randy. Or Deb. Or all the others who have been knocked around too many times to count.
Praise God. We are healed. And as the old song says, Let the redeemed of the Lord say so!
Today I speak life, health, redemption and wholeness.
BY HIS STRIPES.

Isaiah 53:2-6 (The Message)
The servant grew up before God—a scrawny seedling,
a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.
But the fact is, it was our pains he carried—
our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We're all like sheep who've wandered off and gotten lost.
We've all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong,
on him, on him.