Tuesday, March 5, 2013

Call for Action

 Isaiah 55:6-12
“Seek the Lord while he may be found;
    call upon him while he is near;
let the wicked forsake his way,
    and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on him,
    and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
    neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord.
For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
    so are my ways higher than your ways
    and my thoughts than your thoughts.
10 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
    and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
    giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
    it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
    and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
12 “For you shall go out in joy
    and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
    shall break forth into singing,
    and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

My thoughts are not God's thoughts; the human ability to reason and logic and philosophize is not God's thoughts.  The highest good that we can imagine is the bits of divinity in rain water; those drops of divine traveled a long away from the heavens down to where the raindrop thought lands on my skin and soul.

Is the authority of God where this passage ends?  In the lectionary this past week, the highest authority is placed upon God.  But the text continues on to a powerful finish that sent a message of action for me.  God does not rain down the moments of divine that we can only partially feel in our human skin just so that God can demonstrate how powerful and almighty God is.  These tiny drops of eternal life are given to us so that we can cultivate seeds of growth and change into blossoms of love, hope and justice.  In Isaiah 55:11, God says that the words and efforts that God gives are expected to come back with a human spin on them.  We have the urge to fill the void of emptiness and given gifts to be in community with people so that we come to God full of experience.  That experience might be of loneliness and shame, but it also contains glimmers of hope and love because God gave us the droplets of love in the first place.  We are called to be developers of God's word in our life and in the lives of the people around us.  Anyone can take what has been rained on them and cultivate something beautiful; transformation is always an aspect of life.

What droplets have hit your skin and soul?  What do you plan to do with those droplets?


Every day, you wake up as a beautiful child of God.  What do you plan to do with that beauty?  There is plenty given and plenty to do, but the significance lies in how you act in regards to your gifts.

3 comments:

  1. Kaitlin, can we use this blog post for the LCM Devotions this month sometime?

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  2. We spent a long time in our Bible Study on Sunday morning talking about the condemnation in Luke. It was such a wonderful thing to turn to Isaiah and read these words of hope and grace. (And, the musicality of these verses reminds me so much of Steve!)

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  3. Yea Papa!
    Hey Sarah--glad that you also enjoyed the words of Isaiah this week--ha yea the last verses definitely made me smile; I love that so much of the Old Testament is full of familiar words :)

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