January 2, 2026 Devo

When you look back on your childhood, were there ever times you thought your parents didn’t love you? Or maybe, at least, times you didn’t think that they cared about you very much? I remember a time when my father whipped me with a belt. I had been playing with some friends in an abandoned and condemned house that I had been specifically warned not to go into. At the time, I didn’t view my father’s whipping as “caring.” I simply saw it as not wanting me to have fun. I see it much differently now.
God reminds us in our verse in Isaiah today that we don’t recognize His caring either. Israel sure didn’t. Every step they took from Egypt to the Promised Land was met with whining, complaining, and cries that God had abandoned them. They failed to see that everything He did for them was because He loved them and wanted to see them flourish. But He couldn’t do that when they kept choosing their own path and walking away from His protection and provision. They forgot that “the Lord disciplines those He loves, just as a father disciplines the son he delights in.” (Proverbs 3:12)
This is an important thought for us to camp on today. I’ll bet a lot of us haven’t recognized God’s “caring” along the way. Like when He doesn’t answer a prayer the way we want because He knows that answering that prayer the way we want isn’t good for us. Or like when He allows us to suffer the consequences of painful choices because it’s the suffering that teaches us the lesson. Or like allowing us to fail on a path we chose so that we could learn how desperately we need to depend on Him. Often when these things happen, we get mad at God. We might even stop going to church, stop reading our Bibles, or stop praying. We might even stop believing in God altogether. Most of us certainly don’t thank Him for that kind of caring! Though honestly, we should.
Remember the whipping I told you about? Though I was mad at my dad and really didn’t understand it, two things happened as a result. One, I never went back into that house that could have easily collapsed with me in it and caused serious injury or death. Two, I became a lot more obedient to my father’s other “warnings” going forward. And that obedience probably saved me a lot of pain and trouble along the way. It saved my backside some pain for sure!
God LOVES you. REALLY loves you. And His “caring” may disappoint you sometimes and hurt you sometimes. But trust me when I say, it comes from a father’s heart. God is going to do what’s best for you, even if you don’t recognize it. You can be mad, sad, or stop speaking to Him as a result, but He’s still going to act on your behalf. Hopefully, like me, you’ll look back one day and see it for what it was. “Caring.” That’s God’s Word for you today.