Something struck me today as I was listening to Isaiah 61 being read by the soul resonating voice of Izwe Nkosi through the brilliant Lectio 365 prayer app (check it out if you haven’t already).

“…to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour and the day of vengeance of our God…”

First was that it’s “the day of vengeance of our God…” and that in the same way we often assume we know what love is and then read that onto God we often think we know what vengeance should look like and read that on to him as well. This is the day of vengeance of our God and as we see it is going to look a lot different from the day of vengeance of other gods and most importantly it is going to look very different from to the day of vengeance of me God, and I’m reminded again that ‘human anger does not bring about the righteousness that God desires.’ (Let the Tweeter, Activist, Instagrammer understand.)

Then as I started to think about the nature of the ‘day of our God’ and compared to the day of other god’s the greatest difference is that it is just one day. 

I am still sometimes annoyed by things that happened years ago, my vengeance lingers but for him it is just one day, and importantly as we see a few words prior his favour in contrast lasts a year. 

His favour is 365 times greater than his vengeance, and that is such good news, because for those who grew up in the holiness tradition of the Church you do not have to lower your view of God’s holiness, his anger at sin, or his heartbreak at injustice but you do have to exponentially expand your understanding of his favour. 

Often our tendency when trying to speak of God’s favour is to downplay his holiness but that means you not only lower his glory but you underplay his goodness, constraining it within the limit of our expectations. No, he is more holy than you ever imagined, and whatever you imagine his holiness to be his favour and affection is 365 times greater than that towards you. 

Now what’s fascinating is that when Jesus picks up this passage and presents it as his TL;DR of what’s he’s all about - he gets half way through verse 2, reads: ‘to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour…” stops and rolls up the scroll. 

Every person in the room would have felt the unspoken “dot dot dot…” And I think he’s saying: “watch this space” you are about to see what three years of his favour looks like. And then you’ll also see the day of his vengeance, displayed for all to see on a hill outside of Jerusalem, where not just his justice but his mercy was poured out too.

Which is definitely not what anyone expected then, and still not what I expect today, and is what those of us who follow Christ will have to wrestle with to accept every day of our following until we meet him face to face. This truth that our God is not the same as other gods, that even our best expectations, highest thoughts, or fuzziest of feelings of him fall short, and that his favour is greater than his frown. That as the Puritan Richard Sibbes put it: 

“There is more mercy in Christ than there is sin in me.”

How much more? Well at least 365 times* as more to start with…

*366% greater on leap years. And 385% greater every 3rd or 4th year if you are Chinese.