Grace Mills River

What’s missing from too many places on earth today is missing from too many individual hearts: peace. The angels’ first words were “fear not,” and were not completed until they promised “peace...with whom God is pleased” (Luke 2). Isaiah’s words make...

Neither fanciful nor devoid of truth, “myths” are stories offering both explanation and expectation of our deepest questions. C.S. Lewis argued the Incarnation is the “myth that became fact”--the story which had parallels across cultures and eras but...

The highest thing we can say of God is perhaps also the hardest thing to say in our day: He is Lord.

Isaiah pointedly reaffirms a thread running through the whole bible and reiterated in Jesus: any love of God will naturally translate into a love of neighbor. It’s a version of religion in this passage that sadly becomes a pretext for disconnecting...

Thirsty?

Every society breaks down into categories on a spectrum of favor and acceptance. Before a holy God one might wonder whether they fall within that favor. Isaiah provides a surprising promise to those who might think themselves on the fringes of, if not...

Though we’ve grown accustomed to stories that paint a bleak and bruising future, we still long for those that end in joy--especially those where estrangement gives way to reconciliation. This song in Isaiah is for a people who thought love was lost to...

How would you summarize the Gospel in its simplest terms? It’s barest outline contains a story about a servant--one who responded to another’s plight with passion for their peace.

Jesus, the Suffering Servant, perfectly accepts our disgrace on the cross, and coming out of the grave vindicated by the Father, he stands on our behalf, able to hear our cries for help and, by his words, sustain us in our weariness.

There are few greater consolations than when someone both grasps your affliction and also is well furnished to effect a remedy. You might even be moved to sing. This week Isaiah introduces us to a prominent theme in his words--a Servant who both sees...