Redeemer God - Isaiah: Light to the Nations - Tim Knipp (2 Kings 25:1-4;9-12; Isa. 43:1-3)

Crumbling walls
and shattered bones,
the holy temple pillaged
and burned
to ash.

Choking smoke billows
and grimes faces
downcast
and bewildered.

Exile:
hounded from home
and all that's familiar,
loss beats daily
with each dusty step,
mile after bleak
and tortured
mile.

Babylon looms,
a brick monstrosity,
huge
and unyielding.
Alien tongues babble
and every alley
leads to further 
strangeness
and futility.

Yahweh defeated.
His temple razed.
His people enslaved.

Are you watching
and listening, God?
Can you save us
from seemingly 
unbeatable forces?
Will you come 
to our rescue
or have you
abandoned us here?
Yahweh, they say
you are powerless
and impotent.
When will you
appear?

My plans are not like yours,
though I hear your cries
and feel your pain 
as though it were 
inflicted on 
my own flesh.

You are so very dear to me
and I will never desert you;
even in the direst dungeon
and fiery furnace,
you will not be consumed.
For I am your God
and I will
redeem 
you.