Good News - Series 1

Hi Peeps,

Wuz up, trust you're all good. Got a new flatmate he seems alright he is a "light skinned white guy" (just as we have light skinned Naija's, he is like the colour of milk) and as quiet as a mouse. Although I am still wondering how he sat through my burning food which I left on and slept off. The smoke woke me up and I dashed to the kitchen coughing. Meanwhile my new flatmate sat in the living room adjacent to the kitchen, yet no reaction STRANGE I thought, but it's all good.

I read this writings in The Message and was really blessed (in italics are my own summations), hope it blesses you too

Chapter 53
Who believes what we've heard and seen?
Who would have thought God's saving power would look like this?

Despised
The servant grew up before God
—a scrawny seedling, a scrubby plant in a parched field.
There was nothing attractive about him,
nothing to cause us to take a second look.
He was looked down on and passed over,
a man who suffered, who knew pain firsthand.
One look at him and people turned away.
We looked down on him, thought he was scum.

The Price
But the fact is it was our pains he carried
— our disfigurements, all the things wrong with us.
We thought he brought it on himself,
that God was punishing him for his own failures.
But it was our sins that did that to him,
that ripped and tore and crushed him—our sins!
He took the punishment, and that made us whole.
Through his bruises we get healed.
We're all like sheep that’ve wandered off and gotten lost.
We've all done our own thing, gone our own way.
And God has piled all our sins, everything we've done wrong, on him, on him.
He was beaten, he was tortured, but he didn't say a word.
Like a lamb taken to be slaughtered and like a sheep being sheared, he took it all in silence.

Justice miscarried, and he was led off— and did anyone really know what was happening?
He died without a thought for his own welfare, beaten bloody for the sins of my people.
They buried him with the wicked, threw him in a grave with a rich man.
Even though he'd never hurt a soul or said one word that wasn't true.

Checkmate
Still, it's what God had in mind all along, to crush him with pain.
The plan was that he give himself as an offering for sin so that he'd see life come from it
—life, life, and more life.
And God's plan will deeply prosper through him.

Victory and Reward
Out of that terrible travail of soul,
he'll see that it's worth it and be glad he did it.
Through what he experienced,
my righteous one, my servant, will make many "righteous ones,"
as he himself carries the burden of their sins.
Therefore I'll reward him extravagantly
— the best of everything, the highest honors
—because he looked death in the face and didn't flinch,
because he embraced the company of the lowest.
He took on his own shoulders the sin of the many;
he took up the cause of all the black sheep.

Copyright The message - Isaiah 53

Till Laters, take charge
Shalom