Isaiah 43

This chapter begins with one of my all-time favorite passages in the Bible: “But now, this is what the Lord says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: ‘Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and when you pass through the rivers, they will not sweep over you. When you walk through the fire, you will not be burned; the flames will not set you ablaze.’” (vs 1-2)

If you have (or have had) little children, you know they can be prone to fits of immediate, albeit temporary, despair. I remember when my eldest was a baby; when I would lay her down to change her diaper, sometimes you would have thought the world was coming to an end. She thought I was abandoning her. And later, when she was practicing standing up and balancing, sometimes she would lose her grip and go tumbling, and I swear she would look at me and think, How could she let me fall?!

At first, I thought this was a stage she would grow out of, and I suppose she has, for the most part. But, even though she is now nine years old, there are still things that she reacts to as if they’re the end of the world! And she gets upset when I don’t join in the drama. I guess I can relate, though. When I think back to my own childhood, I can recall moments when I thought that something was the “end of the world”— from dropping my ice cream cone in the sand, to losing my favorite hat; from not having a boyfriend to getting dumped by a boyfriend.

Life brings many small disappointments to children (although, in the eyes of children, they seem huge). Sometimes, parents can and do alleviate those hurts. Other times, they can’t or don’t. Parents have a perspective that their children don’t have. They know that it’s not the end of the world when a 13-year-old girl loses the “love of her life” in a breakup. They know life will continue if that favorite stuffed animal is never found. They are busy protecting their children from the things that really matter, things that could cripple or harm them for life.

God is the same way. He is interested in protecting us in the ultimate sense. He is busy protecting us from the things that could cripple or harm us for eternity. Notice, in the passage quoted above, that God does not promise to keep us away from the storms or the fires. We will go through the waters! We will walk through the fire! God doesn’t promise to provide us with a way around them, but with a way through them.

Often, however, we are more like little children who have not been spared the immediate storm or fire. We want what we want when we want it, and since we can’t see the big picture as God can, the loss of our favorite toy or the dissolution of the love we believed so much in can seem like the end of the world.

In those moments, we may honestly ask, “Where is God? Why did He allow this to happen?” And Isaiah reminds us (as all good parents remind their children) that these things we go through are most definitely not the end of the world for us. Ultimately, we will arise from the waters. Ultimately, we will emerge from the fire. And God will have been there protecting us every step of the way.