Who is this Child King?
Isaiah 9:6-7
For a child has been born for us, a son given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders; and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His authority shall grow continually and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore.
Who is this child on whom all of this authority rests? He is Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace.
But who is he really to me?
Several years ago when I was going through a divorce he was my Mighty Counselor. When my daughter was having open heart surgery he was Mighty God. After the death of my father, he became my Everlasting Father. And today he is my Prince of Peace, with the promise of peace and justice.
As the issues of the world around us seem to compound daily, we find that protests, marches and letter writing to government officials are becoming part of the fabric of our everyday lives. Peace is what we assume we will have once justice is attained, but there is more to peace than its outward expression.
In the Greek and Hebrew texts, peace is often translated as ‘wholeness’ – or inner peace. In Matthew we find the story of Jesus healing the paralytic. The first thing he did was to forgive him; healing his inward condition, then he healed his physical condition. Over and over in the book of Matthew, we get several examples of the importance of the condition of our heart – our inward condition.
Amazingly, this inner peace can be present even in the midst of brokenness, and it is peace in it’s inward expression that will ultimately change the condition of what we experience externally.
We express peace as being the absence of something (the absence of war, abuse, hatred, sickness, poverty etc) True peace however, is more than the absence of something, it is the presence of something. It is found in the presence of our Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace.
Who is this child king to you?
