Isaiah 14 – The
“Lord will have mercy on the descendants of Jacob. He will choose Israel as his
special people once again. He will bring them back to settle one again in the
own land” (14:1).
The prophet offers a satire on the king of Babylon: In Sheol,
the “kings” of the earth will greet the Babylonians, saying “So you too have
been brought to nothing” (14:10).
They used to think they would “climb up to the heavens”
(14:13) but no – they cannot rival God. People of the world will look and see
them no longer. God will wipe out every memory and remnant. Assyria too will be
brought to nothing, and the Philistines are warned too.
From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through
Quakerism
Part 19
This early Quaker
message wasn’t a message they had invented, but it was one they were clearer
about than any other Christians I had ever come in contact with. The
Scriptures told us of this Christ. In his second letter to the Corinthian
church, Paul writes these words: “Examine your selves to see whether you are
living in the faith. Test Yourselves. Do
you not realize that Jesus Christ is in you?” (13:5)
And John—John knew this Christ:
He [John the Baptist]. . . was not
the light, but he came to testify to the light. The true light, which
enlightens everyone, was coming
into the world (John 1:8-9).
God’s light enlightens every person according to John, and
this light came into the world in the person of Jesus. “Abide in me as I abide
in you,” Christ says to his disciples (John 15:4). The indwelling Christ was
the “light” in us that permitted us to see
God and Christ (see 1 Cor.2: 10-12), to hear God’s voice and feel the
encouragement of God’s love: “All who obey his commandments abide in him, and
he abides in them. And by this we know that he abides in us, by the Spirit that
he has given us” (1 John 3:24).
These are all
familiar passages to people who read the Bible or attend church with any
regularity. I had heard and read these passages earlier in my life too, but
I had never realized that they meant what they said in any kind of practical
way—poetical flourish or mystical sentiments maybe--but nothing I could relate
to my day-to-day-life.
No one I had ever met as a practicing Episcopalian or
Catholic had ever spoken of these things in a way that related them to my
experience. But it stood to reason that if Christ’s Spirit is really in the
human spirit, it must be something you can experience and be in contact with. How does one sense that presence? How does
one discern it from all the other things that are present in the human mind and
heart? How does it connect with the gospel the apostles preached or the church
they established? These were the things Friends spoke of in their preaching
and writing. These were the things they focused on in their worship and in the
living of their lives.
They talked about “motions” that drew them to God and made
them feel his presence and “openings” that helped them comprehend his will.
They experienced “pressings” that revealed to them God’ s displeasure with
things that they said or did, and “callings” from him to challenge worldly
customs or preach his gospel to the world. These were the things Friends wrote
about. I knew what it was to have such “motions,” “pressings,” and “openings.” I had had them one way or another all my
life. I had just not been able to see them in the context of the Christ
spoken of in Scripture. A few of the “openings” I had had over the course of my
life had even survived my atheism. I still believed there was order and design
in the universe, and I still felt there
was something in human nature that tapped into some transcendent something
somewhere.
Now I began to open myself to the idea that it was not just
weakness or neediness in me that was at the root of these experiences and
intuitions, but something real and necessary and solid—even God himself:
. . .this is he whom I have waited for and
sought after from my
childhood, who was always near me,
and had often begotten life in
my heart, but I knew him not
distinctly, nor how to receive him or
dwell with him (Isaac
Penington, Early Quaker Writings, Barbour
and Roberts, eds., 233).
I had tried to
convince myself that he had been an illusion, but now I could see that he
simply needed to be accepted in faith. Friends’ way of applying the Christ
event to my interior life permitted me to see a validity in it that was so
helpful and so powerful spiritually that the intellectual difficulties I had
had seemed to pale by comparison. A profound and powerful sense of meaning came
from accepting it. Again there were words in the Eliot poem that seemed
perfectly to capture what was happening:
[I had] had
the experience but missed the meaning,
And approach
to the meaning restores the experience
In a different
form, beyond any meaning
We can assign to happiness (Eliot,
“The Dry Salvages”, Four Quartets,
II. 93-96).
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