Forget Israel?

My cousin challenged me to memorize a verse every week, and wisely added an accountability component. We text the verses we have memorized to each other every week. If I "forget," there is a constant reminder of his verse on my phone. I would recommend that to you as well.

His verse for this week was Isaiah 49:15
    "Can a woman forget her nursing child, or lack compassion for the child of her womb? Even if these forget, yet I will not forget you."

The context is that.., well now I have a problem. To get the context I looked back at the earlier verses of chapter 49. From there, I trailed back to chapters 48, 47, 46, and am now in 45. We need to make an in depth perusal of Isaiah. That might be our next project. But I digress.

Verse 14 is our context, but in the meanwhile, we are now bound for Isaiah-land. Back on topic.
    Zion says, "The Lord has abandoned me; The Lord has forgotten me!"

The Lord was assuring Israel that He had not forgotten them. The context is that Isaiah was prophesying that Israel would be released from Babylon. He even goes so far as to name the ruler who would release them, Cyrus, about 150 years before it happened. The earlier chapters referred to, espouse, and explain the attributes of God, specifically His declaring something would happen before it did. (Isaiah 48:2-6) We gotta go back and look at these chapters. Whew!

Back to this verse. God compares Himself to a mother, and more specifically, a nursing mother. How appropriate on Mothers' Day. Will she forget her child? Sadly, some do, but they are not the norm. But God will not forget Israel. What a promise. And look at the next verse,
    16 Look, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands.

Does that leave any doubt? The Lord "sees" Israel every time He washes His hands. (Anthropromophising here.) God will never forget nor abandon His people. Then it occurred to me to check how many times the Lord promised that we would go to be with Jesus.

John 14 and Revelation 2 and 3 come to mind immediately along with the promise to the dying thief are some prominent verses. But for actual numbers, it would seem that we would be hard pressed to find more than a couple of dozen.

God declared His devotion to Israel at least 87 times, and especially here in this section of Isaiah. The Lord has confirmed His commitment to Israel more times than He promised that we would be with Jesus. Once is enough, however. It is a done deal. But wouldn't that apply to Israel as well?

With that in mind, I would challenge those who claim that God has abandoned Israel to confirm that they will spend eternity with Jesus. This is a ludicrous proposition. God will not forget Israel (or replace them), and He will not "forget" us.

What a promise. What a thought. Now let's get back to Isaiah.... Thank you, Drew for starting me on this path.