A Lent devotional on Isaiah 58:11
"The Lord will guide you always;
he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
like a spring whose waters never fail."
Did you know that the camel doesn’t store water in its hump? It’s the camel’s oval red blood cells that enable it to store enough water to survive long periods without drinking. The hump is used to store fat so that the camel can endure long periods with no food. Isn’t it amazing how God created the camel to live in those parts of the world that have high temperatures and blazing sunshine?
In Isaiah 58:11 we see how God promises to satisfy our needs in a sun-scorched land. While many of us won’t have physically experienced what it’s like to be in a desert, I imagine we can all recall times in our lives when we’ve felt dry both naturally and spiritually. In the west, we don’t tend to have issues of access to clean water like in other parts of the world, but in our spiritual lives we are equally susceptible to drought as anywhere else.
See how this Bible passage reassures us that the Lord will satisfy us and strengthen us, even when we go through dry, tough times. He promises to meet our needs and guide us, refreshing us both physically and spiritually. At the end of the verse, we are compared to a well-watered garden. My thoughts are automatically drawn to the sunflower, which needs a strong stalk to grow tall, turning its face to the sun to ripen its seeds. That’s how God wants to strengthen us, with His living water, so that we can stand tall and bear much fruit.
