Wednesday, July 17, 2024
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
God always prays for us
By my own power.
There’s an Assyrian king talking out of his hat.
I have done it.
He doesn’t sound much different from me, though, really. I just don’t say it out loud.
I am shrewd, I have moved boundaries, I have pillaged.
Is God giving Isaiah a record of this king’s thoughts?
I am a giant! I have put down kings. My hand seizes nests of riches.
Isaiah most likely had a few chickens of his own. Who doesn’t like eggs fried over easy in olive oil?
As one takes eggs left alone, so I took in all the earth, and not a wing fluttered, not a mouth opened. Not a single chirp.
That would, I think, really get Isaiah’s goat. Don’t you touch my chickens. Don’t you touch my people, says the Lord. I will soon put a stop to this.
But not right away. Give the man a chance to repent.
I found myself thinking about how dictators, Hitler included, are usually fearful just inside their bravado. The armor is just skin, and the organs quake and quiver, because mans know he is not God. We did not come from ourselves, we will not return to ourselves. It’s God’s dust out of which we rise.
We can fool ourselves only just so far. From within us, God watches and prays. For us.
Shall he who shaped the ear not hear, or he who formed the eye not see? Shall he who instructs nations not teach men knowledge?
And in the dead of night, I suddenly awaken and know how near he is. Praying, instructing, watching, listening. Listening to me! Surely when morning comes I will remember my arrogance and acknowledge my rebellion. God made me, I did not make him. I will trust God at last, and obey. As far as the East is from the West, I know this is true.
But yet I do not. The morning sun brings a breath of confidence in myself again, and then breakfast comes, orange juice and those great fried eggs, and my midnight vision is forgotten. This is the way of not just kings, and not just Assyrians, this is the way of all flesh.
But my faithlessness does not affect the faithfulness of our Father, who waits with patience yet another day.
The Lord will not cast off his people, nor abandon his inheritance; judgment shall again be with justice. The Lord will not abandon his people.
(Isaiah 10, Psalm 94, Matthew 11)
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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