Isaiah 30:21

(Verse 21.) And the Lord will give you tight bread and brief water. If we refer these times to Zerubbabel, the interpretation is easy; that under him there was not perfect joy, as David says: When the Lord turned the captivity of Zion, we were made like those who are comforted: so that they would receive not full and perfect consolation, but a likeness of consolation.

If, then, such matters are carefully received, if they are hidden and consigned within the quiet places of the mind, if they are marked in silence, they will later be like a wine of sweet aroma bringing gladness to the human heart. Matured by long reflection and by patience, they will be poured out as a great fragrance from the vessel of your heart. Like some everlasting spring they will flow out from the channels of experience and from the flowing waters of virtue. They will come bounding forth, running, unceasing, from, as it were, the abyss of your heart.… And, as the prophet Isaiah declares, "You will be like a well-watered garden, like a flowing spring whose waters will never fail. And places emptied for ages will be built up in you. You will lift up the foundations laid by generation after generation. You will be called the builder of fences, the one who turns the pathways toward peace." That blessing promised by the prophet will come to you: "And the Lord will not cause your teacher to fly far away from you, and your eyes will look upon your guide. And your ears shall hear the word of warning from behind, 'This is the path. Walk along it and turn neither to the right nor to the left.' "

God opens the bosom of his loving kindness to us if we return to him after sinning, for he says by the prophet, "If a man puts away his wife, and she goes from him and marries another man, shall he return to her any more? Shall not that woman be polluted and defiled? But you have prostituted yourself to many lovers; nevertheless return to me, says the Lord." Note how the plea of justice is proposed in regard to the wife who commits fornication and is deserted, and yet, for us who return after our fall, it is not justice but loving kindness that is shown. The inference is obvious, namely, that if our sins are spared with such great love, how great would be our wickedness if we sinned but failed to return after our sin, and what pardon can the wicked expect from him who does not cease to call them after they have sinned! This mercy of God in calling us after our sin is well expressed by the prophet, when it is said to him who turns away from him: "And your eyes shall see your teacher, and you ears shall hear the word of one admonishing you behind your back."

Behind your back, like someone fleeing when called back by his pursuer: he has given you a teacher of justice (Joel 2:23); and he sets out the teaching: this is the way: we will go the king's highway (Num 21:22).

We are truly repentant if we weep bitterly over the actions we have committed. Let us consider the riches of our Creator's attitude toward us. He has seen us sinning, and has borne with it. He who forbade us to sin before we did it, does not stop waiting to pardon us even after we have sinned. The one we have rejected is calling us. We have turned away from him, but he has not turned away. Hence Isaiah said, "Your eyes shall see your Teacher, and your ears shall hear the voice of a Counselor behind you." A person is counseled to his face, so to speak, when he is created for righteousness and receives the precepts of rectitude. When he despises these precepts, it is as if he is turning his back to his Creator's face. But he still follows behind us, and counsels us that we have despised him but that he still does not cease to call us. We turn our backs on his face, so to speak, when we reject his words, when we trample his commandments under foot; but he who sees that we reject him, and still calls out to us by his commandments, and waits for us by his patience, stands behind us, and calls us back when we have turned away.