Wednesday,
March 22, 2023
“Arise, Jerusalem! Let your light shine for all to see. For the glory of the Lord rises to shine on you….I will exchange your bronze for gold, your iron for silver, your wood for bronze, and your stones for iron. I will make peace your leader and righteousness your ruler. Violence will disappear from your land; the desolation and destruction of war will end. Salvation will surround you like city walls, and praise will be on the lips of all who enter there. Isaiah 60:1, 17-18
Isaiah looks across the annals of time to that day when holy light shines
in Jerusalem. It is the Messianic
promise of God that one day all will be well, because all the darkness of
humanity will have been subjected to the light of God’s glory. He speaks of a massive upgrade: bronze becomes gold, iron turned to silver,
wood strengthened to bronze, and common stones made into useful iron. Peace now leads by the rule of
righteousness. Violence has disappeared!
“War” has become a word retired from all lips, even banished from our thoughts,
and the eternal reign of God’s salvation will be the talk of the universe…every
bit of it bathed in the praise and glory of JHWH.
When we read passages like that it is not surprising that a potpourri of reactions
comes forth. One imagines it is fantasy;
how can humanity, the community of
darkness, be found living in such light?
How can peace reign eternally, given the warring nature of mankind? Violence vanished? You would expect the Mad Hatter, that Alice
met in Wonderland, has been given free reign to write the news of the day. So it would be, it seems, a riddle without
answer.
From a human perspective such an idyllic promise of Heaven on earth
is little more than wistfulness, an empty hope, or high-thinking-but-unreachable
dream. It would be nice, but how could
this be?
There was once a teenaged girl who was given such a vision by a heavenly
being. She was told she would bear the Son
of God, Messiah…He would be the Prince of Peace. He would usher-in the Kingdom of God,
and be our Savior. She also
mused on the riddle of being pregnant under the most unusual circumstances: How can this be? But from the first swelling of her belly to
the last drop of blood on Calvary’s hill, every word the Angel told Mary came
true. And it was that truth spoken to
Adam and Eve that a Savior would come to overcome their evil.[1]
Considering all of that, how can we think Isaiah a Mad Hatter with a delusion? The prophet speaks not of a fantasy, but the
most sobering reality. The day is coming
like a pregnant woman’s moment in the birthing suite: pain and the judgment of blood, followed by joy
and the fullness of God’s promise.
Riddles can be as much madness as an unwinnable
video game wasting your hours, like you have an inexhaustible supply. Isaiah was no Cheshire Cat; he was pointing
us in the only direction that matters…eternally!
There are about 2,500 devotional
posts and 400 sermons in the Rocky Road Devotions
library. To dig deeper explore
some of these: Epiphany and The Embrace of God's Peace
Title Image: The Mad Hatter via Pixabay.com Images without
citation are in public domain.
Unless noted, Scripture quoted
from The New Living Translation©
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