Richard Hollingsworth serves Braeside Pastoral Charge in Renfrew Presbytery. His reflections will be added several times a week.

February 2, 2012

Hi and good morning from beautiful downtown Braeside.

Today, I am looking at Isaiah 40:21-31.  There are places on our farm where I like to sit and look across the Ottawa River toward the Quebec side.  I can make out houses and barns, but the distance is too great for me to make out individual people.  Sometimes, on a very nice summer’s afternoon, I can discern groups of people playing on some of the sandy beaches on the Quebec side.  So, I can understand how the writer of Second Isaiah must have felt when he said that “God sits above the vaulted roof of the world, and its inhabitants look like grasshoppers!”  The writer wished to convey the awesome power of God not only in God’s ability to create but also in God’s ability to enter into human history and to change the course of the human story.  The same God who created the vas expanse of the solar system is also the same God who notices the mundane affairs of small creatures such as ourselves.  Thanks be to God.

Today, may God grant work to the labourers, bread to the hungry, joy to the sorrowful, grace to the forgotten and redemption to all people.

God bless,
Richard