No Other Rock

Two or three berries in the top of the uppermost bough. ~ Isaiah 17:6

Note: This devotion is from September 24

Let’s read the full verse: “Yet some gleanings will remain, as when an olive tree is beaten, leaving two or three olives on the topmost branches, four or five on the fruitful boughs,’ declares the LORD, the God of Israel.”

The prophet is foretelling a sorrowful day of leanness that will surely fall upon the idolatrous apostates who had treated Jehovah with perverse thanklessness. Only at the very top – where the sticks cannot reach – are the remaining few berries.

Is this symbolic of our own spiritual lives? Has our spiritual life become barren either now or at various low-points of our lives? What can we do about it?

See verse 10 that says “Because thou hast forgotten the God of thy salvation…”

Let us remember that at the root is the forgetfulness of God. We become inordinately immersed in mundane things, in business, in pleasure, in domestic absorptions, in social affiars, in getting and spending, in working and playing, in much “coming and going” (Mark 6:31).

Look again at verse 10 . . . “Because thou hast not been mindful o the Rock of thy strength . . . “ We are spiritually self-sufficient and forgotten God in the one true rock.

Today, I pray that you and I will get back to Him, that we will put wrong things right, that we will throw down our idols, that we will get back to prayer with faith and love. That our olive trees will again be laden.