Abba's Dearly Beloved

“A bruised reed he will not break.”

Isaiah 42:3 (NIV)

On a day recently where I was in deep need of encouragement due to difficult challenges i was going through, I was walking along a river near to where I live and noticed one stretch of the riverbank that was lined with tall reeds growing at the water’s edge. Immediately, I felt God remind me of the above verse from Isaiah 42, a chapter that prophetically describes our beloved saviour Jesus, the coming servant of the Lord, who would “be a covenant for the people and a light for the Gentiles” (Isaiah 42:6). God describes His chosen servant being filled with His spirit, bringing justice to the nations but it was verse 3 that brought such joy to my downcast heart: “A bruised reed he will not break and a smouldering wick he will not snuff out” (Isaiah 42:3 NIV).

This is the character of our saviour Jesus affirmed during his ministry by the reassurance he gave to the broken and bruised, downtrodden, hurting and struggling he met that He was and is gentle and humble in heart and they who came to him would find rest in him for he would never lay anything heavy upon them (Matthew 11:28-30).

Dear reader, whether you have been bruised, or broken by life’s intense storms, trials and painful and difficult circumstances, there is a saviour and redeemer, Jesus, whose heart will never turn you away and never lay anything heavy upon you as the bruised reed that you and me sometimes feel we are. Rather His gentle and humble heart directs him to not only care for us as those bruised reeds in his tender embrace but to weave his gentle restoration, hope and healing into us until once again we are swaying as reeds do with renewed joy in the breeze.

Let us worship our saviour Jesus in this Christmas season with joy, adoration and wonder for he came as the saviour we so needed with that gentle and humble heart who seeks out the heart of the discarded or bruised and broken, damaged reed, which describes each of us, to forgive, to heal, to restore. Why? For He loves the bruised reed and as we walk more and more in the revelation of our God’s perfect love in Christ for us, whatever our state, His love in us overflows in ever increasing measure to those around us.

There is no fear in love, but [Christ’s] perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with punishment…We love, because He first loved us.

1 John 4:18-19 (NIV)

© 2022, B. Trowbridge.