Isaiah 19 –
Oracle against Egypt: The “idols of Egypt tremble before [Yahweh]” (19:1). The
people of Egypt will fight against each other and the land will be demoralized.
They will be handed over to a “hard master” (19:4), and the waters of the Nile
will dry up. The fishermen, flax workers and weavers will all be dejected. The
leaders of the country are fools – counting on the sages (past kings consulted
by necromancers).
In a passage added later, according to the footnote, Egypt’s
conversion is foreseen. Five towns will learn to speak the language of Canaan;
they will set up altars to Yahweh. Yahweh will reveal himself to them and will
heal them. Israel, Assyria and Egypt
together at the “centre of the world” (19:25) will be blessed.
Isaiah 20 – Prophecy
of the capture of Ashdod, a Philistine town taken by Sargon II, king of
Assyria, in 711. Isaiah walked naked as he prophesied to represent the defeat
Egypt and Cush would suffer from Assyria. It will be a lesson to those in
Israel who looked to them to find safety from Assyria.
From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through
Quakerism
Part 21
But there was more to it than this. The interior Christ was
not just a presence, not just an aura to be engulfed in. He was an active presence. He was in us in his crucifixion. He was
in us in his birth. He was in us to
redeem us, to save us, to bring us back into the image and likeness of God that
we had been created to reflect. As Penington put it in one of his writing,
“I have met with my Saviour; and he has not been present with me without his
salvation, . . .” (Penington, Early
Quaker Writings, Barbour and Roberts, eds., 233).
Salvation, for
Friends, was at the heart of God’s work in the world and in our lives. But salvation wasn’t something far off or distant
any more than God was. It wasn’t something one came into only after death. It was something to be entered into now
– a future perfection to be made real in
us. Eternal life was not about
before or after time for early Friends, or before or after the things in
time. Eternal life was about coming into union with God by being joined to him
in Christ. As John taught, “this is everlasting life, that they may know you,
the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (17:3).
I didn’t see all of this in the very beginning of the turn
in me. But I did see that it was possible that Christ was present in this intimate and powerful interior way, and that
if I opened myself to him there, he would guide me back to life. As I
opened to seeing what was going on in me and in my journey with my friend in
terms of the Christian story, I began to feel this work of salvation as well.
Friends used different images to name Christ’s presence and work:
He is light,
opening and illuminating the way God wants us to walk and the way he wants us
to understand his gospel;
He is God’s word
or voice, communicating to us God’s will and letting us know the direction we
should go in;
He is God’s holy seed,
stirring in us, bursting through the
hard ground of resistance in us and
growing into a sheltering vine in which we can find life. These were the
most common names Friends used to refer to Christ’s indwelling Spirit. But
there were others.
He was our prophet,
our high priest, our king, our messiah, our lamb, our shepherd. Virtually
all of the redemptive images and figures that were part of the Scripture
context pointed to some way that God’s presence and power was in and among us to
lead us to life.
No comments:
Post a Comment