The Year of His Favor
I’ve been awake since 3:30 this morning with a sick pup. She had a pretty scary accident, and I was too addled to go back to sleep. I felt so tired that my eyes burned yet I wasn’t able to relax. I was worried about her, worried about not getting enough sleep, just worried in general I think. I ended up watching Law & Order: SVU and a Netflix crime show between 3:45 and 4:45 AM. Not the most uplifting way to start the first day back to work in the new year, I’ll admit. Then I caught up on my socials. I took a few Buzzfeed quizzes. One told me I’m going to meet my soulmate in ten days. Another told me it wouldn’t happen for another five years. I’ve been teetering between those two beliefs for decades. I wasn’t even fazed by these results. I just laughed them off.
I knew I should read my Bible. It was right next to me on the nightstand. I was kind of hoping the Lord had woken me up to give me a new revelation or to prepare my heart for some good news today. Like meeting my soulmate in ten days. Something completely logical like that. Nearly sixteen hours later, I’m not totally convinced He didn’t wake me up.
I didn’t turn to some random Scripture or see a bright shining light fill my room. I didn’t get some new revelation from a verse that jumped out at me. I turned to my favorite chapter in the Bible. Isaiah 61. I wanted to read it. I wanted to refresh my mind. It’s been nearly 11 years since that chapter took on deeper meaning in my life.
One Sunday in July 2010, I woke up with dread and anxiety and so many tears. I could hardly compose myself to go to church. The church my dad pastored. The church where all eyes would be on me (at least in my mind) to see how I would act or react in any given moment.
I was so heartbroken and could not stop crying. I was comparing the despair and shame I felt to the filtered Facebook posts of those around me, and I didn’t measure up. I felt like I would be single forever. Alone for the rest of my life. Buying frozen meals for one. I was really discouraged. My sweet daddy had such compassion on me that day. He came up to my bedroom (it was more like a bonus room, attic apartment a la Jessie and Rebecca Katsopolis) and sat on the floor next to my bed. He had been praying for me in his quiet time with the Lord and said “Lord, I need a Word for Caroline.” What he meant by that was he needed something from the Word of God, the Bible, that would encourage me, something that would take the sting out of the sadness I felt.
I always knew he prayed for me. I always felt so humbled by it. I couldn’t believe that someone would take time away from praying for literally anything else and spend it on me. At times it made me uncomfortable. I didn’t feel like I deserved his prayers. He would tell me all the time that he prayed for me, but this time was starkly different. For one thing, he came with a Bible in his hand. Not totally unusual if you knew my dad, but in a moment like this it was a little strange.
He opened the Bible, the Bible he started each day with, the Bible he preached from, the Bible he loved so much, to Isaiah 61, and he read the entire chapter out loud to me. He read from the Amplified version (our family’s favorite), so even though it’s only 11 verses, it took while to get through the whole unabridged chapter.
By the time he got to verse 3, I knew the passage pretty well. It was the inspiration for one of my favorite 90s contemporary Christian songs “Beauty for Ashes” by Crystal Lewis and Ron Kenoly.
He gives beauty for ashes
Strength for fear
Gladness for mourning
Peace for despair
I remember going to the local Christian bookstore and purchasing it when I was in the sixth grade. A really cool thing about my dad was that he never said no when I asked him to buy me Christian music. That album is still in my rotation. It’s a part of the tapestry of my life. I just had no idea fourteen years after I first heard of this idea of beauty for ashes that it would come back to me in such a profoundly personal way.
A song of ascent will do that. It finds its way to your heart.
He read the rest of the chapter to me while I sat there in silence not moving. Just listening. Trying to find the smallest glimmer of hope in these verses. Over the last decade, these verses have given me so much comfort. They have encouraged me when nothing else works.
I like to think of the Songs of Ascents as a guide or a starting point. They teach us to remember. They nudge us to look back at the times the Lord has answered prayers or given us Words of encouragement on a sad Sunday evening. They take us back to situations that seemed impossible in the moment but when we take stock we see that He came through for us.
Even though Isaiah 61 is technically not a Song of Ascents, it is a personal song for me that happens to have a cool 90s Christian song to go with it. It is a touchstone of God’s lovingkindness and compassion. Ten years later, I have a Word. It’s a Word I can stand on. It is a promise of what is to come and a love letter from my Father in Heaven read to me by my father on earth.
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This chapter in Isaiah is what Bible scholars and theologians call a Messianic prophecy. Let me show you why. It starts like this:
v1 “The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to bring good news to the poor; he has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
v2 To proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn;”
Fast forward many years later to when Jesus started His ministry. He went to the synagogue (modern day translation: church) in Nazareth which happened to be his hometown. Luke’s account of it says that Jesus stood up to read and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled it and found what we know as chapter 61 (back then it was just a really long letter). This is what He read:
“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
You know what He did next? He dropped the mic. Well, they didn’t have microphones back then but He probably would have. He rolled the scroll back up, gave it to the attendant, and sat down. BOOM.
Everybody in there was stunned. Recently, my pastor put it this way: they all knew Isaiah. They had studied the scrolls of the prophets. They couldn’t believe Jesus read that, and to top it off He looked at them and said “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.” Another BOOM.
He shook everything up when He read Isaiah 61 and probably when he left out the day of vengeance part. We are not supposed to add or take away from any Scripture - the Bible says so - but guess who can edit it on the fly? The author. Every word of Scripture was given to holy men of old and it is GOD BREATHED. Jesus is the Word. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the WORD WAS GOD. (That’s from John 1:1.) So He made clear to them that the key takeaway is the Lord’s favor. (Side note: I like to think of the verse in Isaiah as a comparison - a year of the Lord’s favor certainly outweighs a day of His vengeance.)
They probably weren’t thrilled with Him to begin with, but then he really blew their minds when He basically said “Btw, this is about me. I’m the one Isaiah was talking about.” He had to dip after that because they were so angry that they wanted to kill him. It wasn’t time for that. He had work to do. It was the year of the Lord’s favor.
After I heard my pastor preach on this at church, at the end of a really weird and hard year, I started to feel encouraged again. I’ve thought about it a lot more lately, and that’s why I wanted to read it again. I wanted to stir my mind by way of remembrance. I wanted to sing this deeply personal promise one more time. What is so wildly unbelievable to me is that Jesus confirmed this prophecy. For all those who didn’t believe Him that day, there were a few who did. They had been looking for Messiah wondering when He would come.
What a paradigm shift for me - Jesus fulfilled Isaiah 61. He is here to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
