Monday, April 2
Isaiah and a song...
Yesterday at Crossings we continued on this trek through our values…trying to establish in these first few weeks of our existence the things that are most important to us as a faith community. Yesterday was week 2 of Restoration.A couple of things stood out to me as particularly powerful.
One is this passage from Isaiah 58, from the Message version…
Isaiah 58:9-12
"If you get rid of unfair practices, quit blaming victims, quit gossiping about other people's sins, If you are generous with the hungry and start giving yourselves to the down-and-out, Your lives will begin to glow in the darkness, your shadowed lives will be bathed in sunlight. I will always show you where to go. I'll give you a full life in the emptiest of places— firm muscles, strong bones. You'll be like a well-watered garden, a gurgling spring that never runs dry. You'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out of your past. You'll be known as those who can fix anything, restore old ruins, rebuild and renovate, make the community livable again.
The second was the song we closed the morning with: Oh My God This Jars of Clay tune is incredibly powerful.
Both the scripture and the song prompted the same response…silence. A powerful, almost eerie silence. A silence that usually follows a moment when you feel you have heard something from God that could possibly change your life if you let it.
Mark Nelson at 12:39 PM 2comments
2 Comments
-
at 3:07 PM
Brokenness-Quebrantado said... Mark,
I was reading Judges this morning I came across the life of Jephthah the son of a whore. What surprised me about this story is that the messy life, the rejected life, the difficult life becomes a Glorious future. From the son of a whore to a General and a Judge(Judges 11).
What I like of what you shared is the sentence, "you'll use the old rubble of past lives to build anew, rebuild the foundations from out your past"(Isaiah 58) WOW!!!......-
at 11:27 AM
The Anonymous Human said...
I've always loved the section of scripture starting at Isaiah 58 - 62. I love that when Jesus began his ministry he used scripture from this section. I remember in college Doc Reese talking about 62:4 and how much God delights in us. It was one of the first times I felt like a beloved child of God and not just an awful failure. I love the ending of 62 as well,
"Go out! Prepare the highway for my people to return! Smoothe out the road; pull out the boulders' raise a flag for all the nations to see. The LORD has sent this message to every land: "Tell the people of Israel, 'Look, your Savior is coming. See, he brings his reward with him as he comes.'" The will be called the Holy People and the People Redeemed by the LORD. And Jerusalem will be known as the Desirable Place and the City No Longer Forsaken."
It all comes back to Christ's work in us. Amazing.