Welcome on this last day of the year to today's encouragement from our daily bread.

I'm Amy Boucher Pie and I called our reading The Hand of God.

In 1939, with the recent outbreak of war for Britain, King George VI sought in his Christmas

Day radio broadcast to encourage citizens of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth

to put their trust in God.

Quoting a poem that his mother found precious, he said,

Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God.

That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.

He didn't know what the new year would bring, but he trusted God to guide and uphold them in the anxious days ahead.

The image of God's hand appears in many places in the Bible, including in the book of Isaiah.

Through this prophet, God called his people to trust that he as their creator, the first and the last, would remain involved

with them. As he says in Isaiah chapter 48, verse 13, my own hand laid the foundations of the earth,

and my right hand spread out the heavens. They should put their trust in him and not look to those less powerful.

After all, he is their Redeemer, the Holy One of Israel.

Whatever we face as we look toward the new year,

we can follow the encouragement of King George and the prophet Isaiah and place our hope and trust in God.

Then for us too, our peace will be like the river, our well-being like the waves of the sea.

Our passage from the Bible today is from Isaiah, chapter 48, verses 12 through 19.

Listen to me, Jacob, Israel whom I have called, I am he, I am the first and I am the last.

My own hand laid the foundations of the earth,

and my right hand spread out the heavens. When I summon them, they all stand up together.

Come together all of you and listen. Which of the idols has foretold these things?

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