Strengthened for the Battle

I spent an hour or so non-stop yesterday gathering leaves. This photo above is the "before" picture. My folks have a huge yard of trees. My job for the week I am here in NY is to get all these leaves raked before I depart. I am worried that I be will be thwarted by rain and cold. The forecast is not promising. Here is another "before" picture.

While a fine mist of rain had started already, I knew as long as it was only sprinkling, I needed to get out there. I had about an hour before lunch and before heavier rain was forecast. Lunch is not just lunch at my folks. It is an event. Rain or even hurricanes might not stop me, but woe to she who tries to ignore the lunch timetable. So I worked furiously for that hour, after which my father came out and gave me a ten minute warning to be showered and ready for lunch. Truth be told, I was ready to take a break. Yard work is exhausting. Here is what I accomplished:

And here is another:

I think if I could have 6 days without rain, I could do this job. If it rains the whole time I am here, all bets are off. The afternoon after lunch, it was raining, so no yard work.  The rain and cold continued all day. This morning when I looked out the window at the back yard, it was almost as though I hadn't worked on it at all. The whole yard stretched before me still covered in a foot-thick layer of leaves. I could barely discern the dent I had made the day before in the mat of now heavy sodden, leaves.

Here were some of my morning verses:

Isaiah 49:4,14  But I said, “I have labored in vain;
    I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my right is with the Lord,
    and my recompense with my God.”...
The Lord has forsaken me;
    my Lord has forgotten me.”

Sometimes this is what life feels like. It feels like we have been working as hard as we can to do all we know we should do in service to God, and the day comes to a close, and nothing seems to have been accomplished. People still scoff at us and Him, non-believers reject His promises despite our most earnest pleas, His presence and miracles are kicked aside, relationships still founder, and persistent sin is still persistent. The leaves keep piling up, new ones fall, and the work before us will never end.

But then, I read on. Never only read a partial message. Here is how God in Isaiah 49 answers the despairing cry of the writer:

“Can a woman forget her nursing child,
    that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb?
Even these may forget,
    yet I will not forget you.
¹⁶ Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands;
    your walls are continually before me.
¹⁷ Your builders make haste;
    your destroyers and those who laid you waste go out from you.
¹⁸ Lift up your eyes around and see;
    they all gather, they come to you.
As I live, declares the Lord,
    you shall put them all on as an ornament;
    you shall bind them on as a bride does.

Engraved on His hands! We can not be forgotten. He will not leave us. Nothing we do in His name will be in vain. Lift up our eyes and see! ( see what...a leaf?) No! See that he has gathered "builders" not destroyers around us! The enemy will be vanquished, our efforts will be blessed, and God will be our refuge and our strength! 

With this in mind, I head back out to the lawn of leaves, strengthened for another day of battle.
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Isaiah 49: 25-26
for I will contend with those who contend with you,
    and I will save your children. 
 I will make your oppressors eat their own flesh,
    and they shall be drunk with their own blood as with wine.
Then all flesh shall know
    that I am the Lord your Savior,
    and your Redeemer, the Mighty One of Jacob.”