Friday 16 December 2011
- Bible Book:
- Isaiah
"Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him, to take spoil and seize plunder, and to tread them down like the mire of the streets." (v. 6)
Background
How are we to understand the troubles that assail us? It is easyto make excuses for God and think that God's got nothing to do withit. Today, for example, we may want to account for the difficultiesof the Church in the language of social science, talking of'secularisation', or 'post Christendom', and making sense of ourfeelings of marginalisation and decline in terms of the inevitablemovement of social forces. 'It's nothing to do with God.'
It is tempting for Isaiah to understand their predicament in termsof powerful kings and the conquest of superior armies. 'It'snothing to do with God!'
In such analysis these is an easy comfort, but an inevitablehopelessness arises. If it is all nothing to do with God, then Godhas nothing to do with it all and all is hopeless. By Isaiahunderstanding the people's circumstances in these difficult terms,God is written back into the story, and in the darkness of theirsuffering a light is lit for the future. The God who uses such astick is never to be mastered by it, and God's love will be shownin ways less painful. Surprising though this may seem as we readthese passages, their purpose is to remind people of a God who haseverything to do with it, and who still goes on loving.
To Ponder
How may we account for our Church's presentsituation in terms of God's continual care and concern for us?
What hope is there in your own life to know thatGod remains sovereign over all?
A challenge:
"The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, blessed be the name ofthe Lord." (Job 1:21)