Careful What You Brag Over

And he said, What have they seen in thy house? And Hezekiah said, All that is in my house have they seen: there is nothing among my treasures that I have not shewn them.  --Isaiah 39:4 (Darby)

 Hezekiah was the king of Judah between about 715-686 BC.  The Assyrians had laid waste to Israel, but in their campaign against Judah they had lost badly.  History puts at least part of the blame on a plague that ravished the Assyrian army, but Hezekiah gets some credit; or, more precisely, God helped Hezekiah out.  This delighted the Babylonians. They sent envoys to congratulate Hezekiah, and more likely, to do a bit of spying out of what kind of opponent he really was.  Hezekiah, it sounds like, gushed all over himself about everything he had bragging up a storm in the process.  When Isaiah arrived in his court, Isaiah was not happy or amused at the befuddled thinking his King had demonstrated, nor does it seem was God.  Isaiah tells the King the Babylonians are going to take everything, and they did.

Various commentators explain this "wrath of God" that is rained down on Hezekiah's head by blaming Hezekiah's vanity.  They talk about how because of his vanity Hezekiah is punished.  Would God really punish an entire race of people because their (unelected) leader was vain?  There is a deep theological problem with that!

There is a fact of life we would all do well not to ignore: we are living every day on a treasure map.  Every day of our lives, if we look carefully, thoughtfully, diligently for them we'll see our lives are sprinkled with blessings, or small divine diamonds.  God richly sows our life with many good things and they are present even in the worst circumstances imaginable, for anyone who cares to put their victimhood aside and see.  If we carry the knowledge of our blessings close to our grateful hearts, we feel our wealth in Christ and we also know in humility the One who should get the credit for us having everything.  Those diamond blessings are ours regardless of circumstances, and regardless of errors in our ways.


Hezekiah was flattered to pieces to have the attention of a powerful nation.  He spilled all his treasure out to some cutthroats who had no good intentions whatsoever.  But, it was not this naivety or vanity that brought the destruction of Judah.  Babylon already had designs on Assyria as well as every other nation-state.  Bragging about his treasure with Babylon revealed Hezekiah's misplaced trust in Babylon, not in God; making the inevitable Exile and destruction of Jerusalem all the more poignant and painful.  As Jesus said, do not cast your pearls before swine; and when you pray, go into a closet by yourself.  Hold your blessings dear and close with lots of gratitude and prayer, and keep looking for more treasure of God's faithfulness to you.


Prayer:
Holy God, do not allow us to become so jaded to the good things you put in our lives that we put our trust in our possessions rather than you.  Amen.

A Kind Shove If You Please?

But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint. -- Isaiah 40:31 (KJV)

I've long had an on-going debate in my head about the nature of this "waiting upon the Lord" business.  On the one hand, when one considers that here you have the Lord, whose knowledge and timeline extend millions of light-years beyond my tiny blip on the scene, the contest to wait on Him seems incredibly one-sided.  In the time it might take God to turn around my life could be over by hundreds of years.  So, my imaginary skeptic says, "Sure, sure God would have you wait; wait until you're dead!  Isn't it time to take control and just do it?"  But, then taking control and working oneself to death trying to make a worthy life work brings inordinant tiredness and weariness to the point of fainting.  I have had the experience of waiting for God to help, only to see the matters that stress me and for which I'm praying for God's help only creep progressively worse in the waiting.  Is there not a limit to the amount of time one can wait?

A friend likes to throw in my face the "sage" advice of "Pray like everything depends on God, work like everything depends on you."  Is working like everything depends on me the same as waiting on the Lord?  I suppose there is too much of Maynard G. Krebs (the old Doby Gillis TV show) in me --"WORK??"  What if the work is going in the wrong direction though?  Well can not the Living God redeem whatever work you've done in the wrong direction and make it okay?  Maybe, I think, sitting here waiting...

Prayer:
Lord, renew my strength for waiting and give me less subtle shoves to get where you want me to be.  Amen.  

A Magnificent Gift

Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the LORD, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding.  -- Isaiah 40:28 (KJV)

Isaiah 40 is the basis of so many pieces of Handel's Messiah.  The words, "Comfort, Comfort ye, my people" can elicit an internal Mormon Tabernacle Choir in anyone familiar with it.  The complete fortieth chapter lifts up the reality and belief that God is larger than the universe, wider than the stars, and more widely capable of managing eternity than anything we can possibly conceive on our own.  While humans can wear themselves thin striving to know and understand the machinations of interstellar galaxy expansion, God never wearies of creating with a simple twinkling of an eye.

Yet alongside God's Vast Competency at creating is the very personalized, very individualized, very tightly focused caring of a human being, small as "a grasshopper"
opines Isaiah in verse 22.  God may be able to spin universes into fruition, but God's real heart is directed to the people with whom He keeps a covenant to love and nurture.  The underlying question after reading this chapter is how can anyone doubt their safety in eternity when the very Creator of it all still works diligently, without fainting or growing weary, to hang onto you through all the twists and turns of life?  Have you not known?  Have you not heard?  How can you not have?  How can you doubt it?  Don't try and understand it, you can't and you won't.  Just trust it and believe it.  It is a magnificent gift, as big as the stars.

Prayer:
Creator God, small as we are we can cry to you and know we will be heard.  Embrace us and keep your strong up-lifting hand beneath us always.  In and through your son's name we pray, Amen.