The Lord, the God of Heaven, Has Given Me

Cyrus, the Persian king, decrees that the Israelites can return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. And he says: 'The Lord, the God of heaven, has given me all the kingdoms of the earth and has appointed me to build a house for Him at Jerusalem in Judah.'

This is stunning. Cyrus isn't an Israelite. He's a pagan Persian king. But he's crediting the God of Israel for his authority and his mission. Somehow, through the work of the prophet Isaiah and God's orchestration of history, this foreign king has become a tool of God's restoration.

I think about how much faith requires trusting that God is working even through people and systems you don't control. Sometimes your salvation comes through someone who doesn't even know your God. Sometimes the deliverance comes from an unlikely source. That's harder to accept than if God just directly intervenes. But it's how the world actually works. God uses everyone - willing or not, aware or not - to accomplish His purposes.