Today’s thought “He who walks righteously …” (June 9)

Today’s thought

“He who walks righteously …”

(June 9)

When you “walk” you usually have a destination in mind! Yet, there can be options as to how it is to be reached. It can be, if you are careless in how you plot your walk, that you fail to reach your intended destination. Now compare this with our human “walk” in the journeys of our lives.

We live in a world where many now have very limited aims: to own a good car, to travel to interesting destinations, to have a relationship: things they can do – when? This year – or in the next year or two.

Our thoughts mediated on these lines after reading Isaiah 33. They are clearly words God inspired him to write, words of warning to his people. Consider how much they apply today.

“Now I will arise”,

says God,

“now I will lift myself up; now I will be exalted. You conceive chaff; you give birth to stubble; your breath is a fire that will consume you … The sinners in Zion are afraid; trembling has seized the godless: ‘Who among us can dwell with the consuming fire?’” (verses 10,11,14).

The answer, as to who “can dwell” comes in verse 15:

“He who walks righteously and speaks uprightly … who stops his ears … and shuts his eyes from looking on evil.”

This answer has never changed! And the reward for this will be! Look at verse 17 and onward!

“Your eyes will behold the king in his beauty … Behold Zion, the city of our appointed feasts! Your eyes will see Jerusalem, an untroubled habitation … For the LORD is our judge; the LORD is our lawgiver; the LORD is our king; he will save us … the people who dwell there will be forgiven their iniquity” (verses 17,20,22,24).

May we so live now – that we will visit, or even dwell in God’s holy city – and we will soon read of this in dramatic detail in the Book of Revelation. One verse particularly jumps out,

“The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name” (3:12).

May we all be among those “who walk righteously” stopping our ears and closing our eyes to the increasing evidence of godlessness around us today.