Daily Old Testament: Isaiah 55 and New Testament Inspired Words of James Nayler - Nayler Sonnet 4 by K. Boulding

Isaiah 55 – If you are thirsty, “Come and drink” (55:1). If you have nothing, come and “take your choice of wine or milk: (55:1). “Why spend your money on food that does not give you strength? Why pay for food that does you no good . . . Come to me with your ears wide open. Listen, and you will find life” (55:2-3).

I will give you the same undying love I gave to my servant David. “I made him a leader among the nations. You also will command nations you do not know, and peoples unknown to you will come running to obey” (55:4-5).

“See the Lord while you can find him. Call on him now while he is near” (55:6). His ways are not your ways, his thoughts beyond anything you can imagine. “For just as the heavens are higher than the earth, so my ways are higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts” (55:9).

Like the rain that falls and nourishes the soil, the word of the Lord will always produce fruit. “You will live in joy and peace. The mountains and hills will burst into song, and the trees of the field will clap their hands!” (55:12).

The government will be fair and stable. Enemies will not come near; if anyone does attack you, it will not be because the Lord sent them. “[I]n that coming day no weapon turned against you will succeed. Your will silence every voice raised up to accuse you” (54:17).

New Testament Inspired:

Beautiful Quaker Words: James Nayler’s Deathbed Testimony

There is a spirit which I feel that delights to do no evil, nor to revenge any wrong, but delights to endure all things, in hope to enjoy its own in the end. Its hope is to outlive all wrath and contention, and to weary out all exaltation and cruelty, or whatever is of a nature contrary to itself. It sees to the end of all temptations. As it bears no evil in itself, so it conceives none in thought to any other. If it be betrayed, it bears it, for its ground and spring is the mercies and forgiveness of God. Its crown is meekness, its life is everlasting love unfeigned; it takes its kingdom with entreaty and not with contention, and keeps it by lowliness of mind. In God alone it can rejoice, though none else regard it, or can own its life. It is conceived in sorrow, and brought forth without any to pity it; nor doth it murmur at grief and oppression. It never rejoiceth but through sufferings; for with the world's joy it is murdered. I found it alone, being forsaken. I have fellowship therein with them who lived in dens and desolate places of the earth, who through death obtained this resurrection and eternal holy life.

Thou wast with me when I fled from the face of mine enemies: then didst Thou warn me in the night: Thou carriedst me in Thy power into the hiding-place Thou hadst prepared for me: there Thou coveredst me with Thy Hand that in time Thou mightst bring me forth a rock before all the world. When I was weak Thou stayedst me with Thy Hand, that in Thy time Thou mightst present me to the world in Thy strength in which I stand, and cannot be moved. Praise the Lord, O my soul. Let this be written for those that come after. Praise the Lord.

Kenneth Boulding’s Nayler Sonnets:

4. But delights to endure all things

How to endure, when all around us die

Nations and gracious cities, homes and men,

And the sweet earth is made a filthy den

Beneath whose roof black, belching vultures fly:

How to endure the darkness, when the sky

Is totally eclipsed by evil, when

Foul grinning Chaos spreads its reign again

And all good things in senseless ruin lie.

Must we be hard as stone? It wears to dust.

As stiff as oaks? But they untimely break.

As pitiless as still? It turns to rust,

And Time from Pyramids will ruins make.

In violence, decay, starvation need,

What can endure? Only the living Seed.