if only

There are two really sad words I read this morning in Isaiah 48: “if only.” Those are the words of God to his chosen people.

Read them, in verses 18 and 19. God says, “If only you had paid attention to my commands, your peace would have been like a river, your well-being like the waves of the sea. Your descendants would have been like the sand, your children like its numberless grains; their name would never be blotted out nor destroyed from before me.”

Oh, what might have been! All the distress and misery of constant warfare, the sieges of Jerusalem, the famines and droughts, the exile to Babylon, all of these judgments from God, didn’t have to be. God didn’t want that for his people, but he couldn’t get them to listen.

I don’t want that to be me. I want the peace like a river, always flowing through my life, always refreshed by some unseen source, always refreshing me. I want waves of wellbeing washing up into my life, as constant as the ocean. I want blessings on my family, for generations to come.

As with everything in life, God tells me how. God says to me what he said to the Israelites. He says all I have to do is pay attention to his commands.

That sounds like I can earn peace and well-being with my works, but I have to remember that God’s commands are all about a relationship with Him. It’s about loving and respecting him. It’s about acknowledging that as my maker and this world’s creator he knows what’s best for me. It’s not the specific actions he commands, but the relationship they will create.

And I know it to be true from my own experience: when I use those commands as my guide to a good relationship with God, I have peace and well-being. It works. Which means that, as with the Israelites, it’s my own fault when my life isn’t that way.