1/7/2012
It’s been great to receive emails of encouragement, phone
calls, etc. – to see how, as news of what’s going on spreads locally and
globally that we have a reservoir of folks who care and pray and
encourage. It’s encouraging to see
how not only we seek comfort and strength and guidance in Scripture but others
do so on our behalf.
[For my Worldviews kids I see a chance to reinforce some of
the stuff we talked about earlier in the year. (I’m going to miss the day to day with you guys!).]
A good friend and former colleague here at BFA, Doc Parsons,
sent along one such Scriptural encouragement. Isaiah 41:10:
“So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not be
dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will
uphold you with my righteous right hand.”
Not a bad
promise, I’d say. But how can I
appropriate this for my situation?
I’ve got to ask some basic questions about the text because, boys and
girls, we don’t want to play fast and loose with the Word of God and we don’t
want to lose the real meaning (exegetically speaking) in the quest to find some
preferred but not really there comfort (eisegetically speaking). So we ask some basics – what are the concentric
contexts (paragraph, section, book, body of literature)?, authorship and
audience and historical setting, figures of speech?, etc.
What do we get?
(I’m not going to do a lot of heavy hermeneutic lifting here). We get the words of the prophet Isaiah
speaking out against idolatry and urging Judah to live right under the rising
threat of Babylon over 700 years before the time of Christ. We know prophetic writing tends to
speak on many levels of time – the now, the soon, the later and the distant
future. Isaiah’s full of this sort
of stuff. He’ll address the
present sins of Israel or Judah, warn of soon coming judgment, promise redemption
from that and speak at length about the Suffering Servant, the Messiah, the
Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty King, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of
Peace. This figure is the ultimate
Redeemer whose birth we recently celebrated and whose life lived out the
amazing and specific prophecies found in Isaiah. (When you see this happening
you know you’re into a pretty spectacular story grounded in truth). We get the
figure of speech of God’s righteous right hand when we know God is spirit. There’s a lot more we could explore but
it boils down to an ancient Near Eastern prophet talking about some pretty
cosmic stuff.
Is he talking to
me, to us? Can we claim, “So do not fear, for I am with you;
do not
be dismayed, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you;
I will
uphold you with my righteous right hand.”, for ourselves? Is it really all about us?
Nope and
Yup.
It’s probably not
all about us and our present specific situation.
But I do know
it’s all about Him.
And what does it
reveal, who does it reveal? It
reveals the Redeemer of Israel, of Judah, of the universe. It reveals that the Suffering Servant
is with the Israelites and with His Church, His people who He has called by His
Name for He is our God. That he is
the source of courage and strength.
And if we’re going to be held up by anything it’s going to be by Him.
And guess what,
He has enlisted His people to help out.
So thanks Doc Parsons and all the many others who are part of the
righteous right hand of God in motion.
On the day to day front – feeling pretty good today, did a
few errands, ironed (a strange passion I’ve developed late in life), took a
walk by the local farm, and finished my last year project of reading the Bible
in big chunks (Revelation 5-22 today).
How will I approach it next?
Diane’s cooking up some chicken ala king and it smells (the
mushroom stage) pretty good. I
continue to rejoice in what we have together and I’m pretty impressed with our
kids as well.
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