Isaiah 49:1b

before I was born the Lord called me; from my mother’s womb he has spoken my name.

Even in an age when choosing your own identity is considered to be almost a basic human right, we find it hard not to project our ideas about the future onto babies and children. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” “I wonder if she’ll follow in her mother’s footsteps?” It’s fascinating to look at a newborn baby and realise that you could be looking at a future Prime Minister, Nobel Prize winner or Under 11s table tennis champion. You just don’t know! A child born today could grow up to pursue a career that doesn’t even exist yet.

But that wasn’t the case for the Servant. From before he was even born, there was no doubt at all what his life’s work would be. He was chosen and set apart by God to be the saviour of God’s people. This verse just tells us that he was called before birth, but 1 Peter 1 tells us that in fact he was chosen before the creation of the world. The Servant was appointed to be the saviour before any of the people he would save had even been made, and before the sin from which we would need saving made its first messy marks on God’s perfect creation.

Isn’t that so reassuring? At no point in human history has God ever been caught off-guard. Never has he had to scrabble around for a Plan B because his original idea failed. His wonderful decision to send Jesus to be our rescuer has stood the test of time, accomplishing God’s purposes perfectly. Even more wonderfully, we know from the rest of the Bible that this Servant is not an unwilling participant in the salvation plan, like the child who inherits a generations-old family business, but who would much rather have done something else with their life instead. This Servant is only born into a human body because he chose to leave the glory of heaven in order to save us.  He didn’t have to go anywhere near a mother’s womb if he didn’t want to. But he chose birth, and life and death, in all their messiness and pain, for our sake.

Let’s thank and praise him for that today.