I go through times where I’m troubled in various ways and often find myself awakening during the night into times of prayer, contemplations, song…and last night…even into dance at the foot of my bed.
When we are pressed by many cares, and have many cares for many things and many others, where else can the Jesus follower turn but to Jesus?
I was unnaturally worn out last night and was in bed rather early. During the night I awoke, and after a time of calm and deep thoughts and supplications (that have a certain quality within the night watches and soul churnings), a song came to mind and I listened to it awhile. After I drank this in, coupling it with various prayers and internal reachings, as I was trying to resume sleep, another line of a song came to mind.
“…and you shall have a song in the night…”
Surely God works in-and-out of our natural thought processes. And I found “The Mighty One of Israel.”
After listening a couple times, I felt as though if I had enough energy, I would have adventured outside around 1 am into the back grass and full moon light and danced and worshipped to my mighty Jesus. I could not bring myself to do that but followed the urging, literally getting out of bed. I worshipped, danced and supplicated to God…recalling glimpses of years ago doing the same to this song with others at church during morning worship gatherings.
It felt powerful, and I felt seen and heard by God.
When I got back into my bed, I wondered what text that song is inspired by and looked it up. I would have thought it from a Psalm, but found it was from Isaiah 30. I read through, and then, returned to sleep.
This morning, I re-visited Isaiah 30 in reading and then in audio.
I find it hard (yet terribly easy at the same time) to know how to approach and receive from Old Testament prophecy and stories and such. Of course there is the immediate context of historic situation, genre and to whom and what was being addressed (and that is what makes it hard, as I am not a bible scholar). Yet surely, just as in a poem or song or novel, there are parts which stand out to us personally, due to some timeless quality, inherent overarching truth, or principle of thought, idea and such…
Below I am exercising by highlight, without any more personal expounding here, various parts that stand out to me this morning. A year from now, I could re-visit this and find myself highlighting different parts. Scripture is a living, breathing message to us (and/or for us) from God.
When I do blog pieces, the forming of the title is one of the most significant aspects of expression. I was torn between the title I chose and But the People of God Will Sing a Song of Joy (vs. 29, NLT). It seems to me that the first segments of Isaiah 30 are describing the condition (collectively, or individually) of people who are set apart for God’s own purpose and to receive His love, joy and blessings…but have gone astray. Embedded in this description are many gloomy woes, and implied conditions for recovery of purpose and receiving flow from God.
And then, the ending segments put on full display how quickly our God stands ready to forgive, to heal and to restore us beyond our possible imagination. It is like a Father or Mother that upon the slightest sound of their child’s call for them, rushes to their help.
I suppose the title here won out in my contemplations for a number of reasons ranging from the personal and internal, to the external view of all that we are facing these days in the world. We cannot hope to get to the verse 29 blessing/restoration if we stop desiring to hear from God. These days at every turn, we are being challenged as God’s people (not any literal “nation”) from within our personal lives and from without to turn away from the voice of Jesus to us (through scripture and through active, living relationship that inherently should flow in us from that, through God’s Spirit), personally and collectively.
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Woe to the Obstinate Nation
Isaiah 30 (NIV)
“Woe to the obstinate children,”
declares the Lord,
“to those who carry out plans that are not mine,
forming an alliance, but not by my Spirit,
heaping sin upon sin;
2 who go down to Egypt
without consulting me;
who look for help to Pharaoh’s protection,
to Egypt’s shade for refuge.
3 But Pharaoh’s protection will be to your shame,
Egypt’s shade will bring you disgrace.
4 Though they have officials in Zoan
and their envoys have arrived in Hanes,
5 everyone will be put to shame
because of a people useless to them,
who bring neither help nor advantage,
but only shame and disgrace.”
6 A prophecy concerning the animals of the Negev:
Through a land of hardship and distress,
of lions and lionesses,
of adders and darting snakes,
the envoys carry their riches on donkeys’ backs,
their treasures on the humps of camels,
to that unprofitable nation,
7 to Egypt, whose help is utterly useless.
Therefore I call her
Rahab the Do-Nothing.
8 Go now, write it on a tablet for them,
inscribe it on a scroll,
that for the days to come
it may be an everlasting witness.
9 For these are rebellious people, deceitful children,
children unwilling to listen to the Lord’s instruction.
10 They say to the seers,
“See no more visions!”
and to the prophets,
“Give us no more visions of what is right!
Tell us pleasant things,
prophesy illusions.
11 Leave this way,
get off this path,
and stop confronting us
with the Holy One of Israel!”
12 Therefore this is what the Holy One of Israel says:
“Because you have rejected this message,
relied on oppression
and depended on deceit,
13 this sin will become for you
like a high wall, cracked and bulging,
that collapses suddenly, in an instant.
14 It will break in pieces like pottery,
shattered so mercilessly
that among its pieces not a fragment will be found
for taking coals from a hearth
or scooping water out of a cistern.”
15 This is what the Sovereign Lord, the Holy One of Israel, says:
“In repentance and rest is your salvation,
in quietness and trust is your strength,
but you would have none of it.
16 You said, ‘No, we will flee on horses.’
Therefore you will flee!
You said, ‘We will ride off on swift horses.’
Therefore your pursuers will be swift!
17 A thousand will flee
at the threat of one;
at the threat of five
you will all flee away,
till you are left
like a flagstaff on a mountaintop,
like a banner on a hill.”
18 Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;
therefore he will rise up to show you compassion.
For the Lord is a God of justice.
Blessed are all who wait for him!
19 People of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help! As soon as he hears, he will answer you. 20 Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them. 21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.” 22 Then you will desecrate your idols overlaid with silver and your images covered with gold; you will throw them away like a menstrual cloth and say to them, “Away with you!”
23 He will also send you rain for the seed you sow in the ground, and the food that comes from the land will be rich and plentiful. In that day your cattle will graze in broad meadows. 24 The oxen and donkeys that work the soil will eat fodder and mash, spread out with fork and shovel. 25 In the day of great slaughter, when the towers fall, streams of water will flow on every high mountain and every lofty hill. 26 The moon will shine like the sun, and the sunlight will be seven times brighter, like the light of seven full days, when the Lord binds up the bruises of his people and heals the wounds he inflicted.
27 See, the Name of the Lord comes from afar,
with burning anger and dense clouds of smoke;
his lips are full of wrath,
and his tongue is a consuming fire.
28 His breath is like a rushing torrent,
rising up to the neck.
He shakes the nations in the sieve of destruction;
he places in the jaws of the peoples
a bit that leads them astray.
29 And you will sing
as on the night you celebrate a holy festival;
your hearts will rejoice
as when people playing pipes go up
to the mountain of the Lord,
to the Rock of Israel.
30 The Lord will cause people to hear his majestic voice
and will make them see his arm coming down
with raging anger and consuming fire,
with cloudburst, thunderstorm and hail.
31 The voice of the Lord will shatter Assyria;
with his rod he will strike them down.
32 Every stroke the Lord lays on them
with his punishing club
will be to the music of timbrels and harps,
as he fights them in battle with the blows of his arm.
33 Topheth has long been prepared;
it has been made ready for the king.
Its fire pit has been made deep and wide,
with an abundance of fire and wood;
the breath of the Lord,
like a stream of burning sulfur,
sets it ablaze.
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