Isaiah 58:6 “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?”

God is very clear: if we want a right relationship with Him, we’ve got to treat the people around us right. Jesus very famously paired our relationship with God to our relationship with people, when He was asked about “the greatest commandment.” (Matthew 22:36-39) There are sadly many people who won’t go to church because they have been treated so shabbily when they have gone. We tend to focus on externals, ignoring the inner wounds that make people look and act as they do. This chapter has some glorious promises toward the end of it, but the first part talks about people who are caught up in religious rituals and traditions, ignoring the hurting people around them. We can’t expect God to look favorably on us if we refuse to see the genuine needs of the people around us. Some churches have misinterpreted this, going into social programs and forgetting the Gospel, the call to repent and believe. They are the ones that have been drawn into all sorts of anti-Biblical causes, and it’s tragic. And then there are the churches that are far better known for what they are against than what they are for, raising doctrinal fortresses and defending them at all cost, failing to see the people that they insist are so “wrong.” It is no accident that the cross has a vertical component and a horizontal component. To be right with God, the vertical, we also need to be right with our fellow human beings, the horizontal. As John said very bluntly, “Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20)

People who know me now might find this hard to believe, but I am by nature an introvert, which makes me tend to focus on my own relationship with God, rather than on the people around me. I have had to learn, over the years, that God loves everybody else as much as He loves me, and He’s no happier when they are suffering than when I am. With my human limitations, there is no way that I can love everyone equally, much less every human being the way God does, but there is nothing to keep me from being a channel of God’s love to the people with whom I interact – other than my own self-centeredness and selfishness. I desire to be God’s agent in everything, and that means genuinely seeing the people around me and responding to them in obedience to Him. I’m still learning to do that! I’m very grateful that this church is a loving, welcoming family, and many have been touched by God’s love through us. Everyone has wounds, and we are to be God’s hospital, binding and treating those wounds for God to heal them. That is what God is saying through Isaiah here.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Thank You for the opportunities You gave Cathy and me over this past week at the gallery to be Your agents of love and healing to people who came in. May they be drawn to You, and not just to us. Thank You that the week is over. Help us recover strength, physically and emotionally. May we flow with Your Spirit in all our interactions, for Your will to be done in and through us, for Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!