18 January 2006

We will continue for a few more days with Walter Brueggemann's comments on the people in exile who are addressed in the part of the book of Isaiah called Second Isaiah.

Second Isaiah lives at the other side of the exile, as the signs accumulate that there will be a homecoming. The anguish of Jeremiah and the heaviness of Ezekiel have been established as reality and do not need to be reiterated or doubted. This is a new generation. A new word needs to be spoken to it, yet that new word does not nullify or retract anything that came before.

First I must say excuse me for not having a devotion published yesterday - life circumstances sometimes take away the energy we have for what are the patterns and movements of the day.

Our God who liberates finds a way to speak to the people who will be liberated. The people of God had been defeated and rejected and taken away to live in a foreign land. This was like being stripped of everything and having to find a new way to live...a new way to identify one's self...a new point of reference from which a new generation could be raised with a sense of purpose and meaning. In chapter 54 of Isaiah, the exiled people are addressed as a people who are barren. This is a people who stand at the edge of a new adventure and yet they carry with them the past that has placed them far from their homeland. The past cannot be simply eliminated. We must remember it and find ourselves within it even as we hear about new possibilities for what is to come. Looking back and remembering the whole of our lives - the whole adventure of the community - helps us to hear the voice of God who is for us through even the times that have been completely against us. The voice of Second Isaiah must be able to pull the people through what has been and set a vision out in front of them so that they will be able to be shaped by the promise of what is to be even as they remember what has brought them into exile.

Connection: Our stories are complex and yet we must be willing to embrace each part of the story so that we never see ourselves above or beyond the many adventures that have brought us thus far in our lives. Knowing who we are helps us become who we are being invited to be by our God.

Lord we pray that we can hear your word as it comes to us to shape us in various ways throughout our lives. Your word of love for us is constant and yet it changes as we move through time paying attention to the world and its ways rather than hearing your voice of love and compassion. Give us the ears to hear your word and to be fed by it all the days of our lives.