Isaiah 8 – Yahweh
tells him to take a seal and scratch a name on it [Maher-shalal-hash-baz] that
means “Speedy-spoil-quick-booty” (8:1). He asks Uriah, a priest, and Zechariah
– both honest men – to be witnesses to him doing this.
“Then I slept with my wife, and she became pregnant and gave
birth to a son. And the Lord said, ‘Call him Maher-shalal-hash-baz. For before
this child is old enough to say ‘Papa’ or ‘Mama,’ the king of Assyria will
carry away both the abundance of Damascus and the riches of Samaria” (8:3-4).
Isaiah is warned by
the Lord not to think like others think. He said, ‘Don’t call everything a conspiracy, like they do, and don’t live in
dread of what frightens them. [the more things change the more they stay the same] Make
the Lord of Heaven’s Armies holy in your life. He is the one you should fear.
He is the one who should make you tremble. He will keep you safe” (8:13-14). He
will be a stumbling block for both Israel and Judah. If people tell you to
consult “mediums and those who consult the spirits of the dead” (8:19), don’t
follow them. “Look to God’s instructions and teachings! People who contradict
his word are completely in the dark. They will go from one place to another,
weary and hungry . . . They will look up to heaven and down at the earth, but
wherever they look, there will be trouble and anguish and dark despair”
(8:20-22).
Isaiah 9 – The
time of despair will not last forever. There “will be a time in the future when
Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan
and the sea [the Mediterranean], will be filled with glory. The people who walk
in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep
darkness, a light will shine” (9:1-2).
“You will enlarge the nation of Israel, and its people will
rejoice. They will rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest and like
warriors dividing the plunder. For you will break the yoke of their slavery and
lift the heavy burden from their shoulders” (9:3-4).
They will break the oppressor’s rod. “The boots of the
warrior and the uniforms bloodstained by war will all be burned. They will be
fuel for the fire. For a child is born to us, a son is given to us. The
government will rest on his shoulders. And he will be called: Wonderful Counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. His government and its peace
will never end” (9:5-7).
But the Lord will bring the armies of the Assyrians and the
Philistines against Israel. The people of Israel “will still not repent. They
will not seek the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. Therefore, in a single day the Lord
will destroy both the head [Israel’s leaders] and the tail [the lying
prophets], the noble palm branch and the lowly reed” (9:13-14).
From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through
Quakerism
Part 16
How this changed [my intellectual resistance to faith] over
the weeks and months ahead, I cannot really explain except to call it grace. To
the extent I can analyze it, it involved a number of things. The first was my
miserable condition and the vulnerability it created in me. It cannot be an accident that I, like so
many others, found God in the midst of profound personal suffering. But it
was not only my condition. It was also this new relationship and the faith
perspective my friend brought to it. He understood a good deal of what I was
only just getting ready to receive, and he was able to help me see it with a
clarity I most certainly would not have been capable of on my own. But I think
the most important element in the mix was the perspective early Quaker thinkers (theologians in the sense that
their thoughts were all about God) brought to the Christian gospel. My friend
introduced me to these writers and mediated their ideas to me in a way I would
not have been able to do on my own.
The relationship
developing between us was the cauldron in which everything came together.
As with so many people in our situation—in the terminal stages of marital
turmoil, miserable and lonely and facing the future with a sense of great
failure and emptiness—there was a powerful temptation for both of us to race
immediately into a new relationship. I had lived for years in a marriage
without feeling much love for or companionship with the man I had married. Now
here was a man who was different. He was more like me in background and
education, more interested in the things I was interested in, and he bore none
of the debris that burdened my old relationship. He was great with children. He
had always wanted them and was wonderful with my three-year old daughter. And
for him too, I represented a new face—someone he could talk to about his
religious longings and not feel the old barriers and conflicts he had had with
his wife. So we gravitated toward each other, and the strong feelings we
developed for each other—sexual and otherwise—were soon something we had to
deal with.
In these days—the sixties and seventies—sex was not one of
those things that young people linked with morality or immorality, as we
understood it. Morality had to do with social wrongs—violence, exploitation,
dishonesty, or lack of respect for others. Sex,
as long as it was mutually desired and “not hurtful” was just not in this
category. Indeed, if you felt inhibitions with respect to non-exploitative
sex, you were considered unhealthy or repressed, a hapless victim of our
Puritan or Victorian heritage. But we were not “hung-up” by these things. We
were both separated. I had been separated for nearly a year at this point and
was preparing to file for divorce.
But something else was in the picture now. My friend was in
rebellion against this sixties mentality.” He
was beginning to question the “wisdom” our generation was trumpeting to the
world. He was seeking something more reliable, more tested. He was
beginning to feel the weight of God’s presence in his life and was interested
in what God’s will was for him. Just because you had a strong desire for
something didn’t necessarily make it “right”—something pleasing to God and
beneficial to your deepest nature. He wanted to build on sturdier ground than
had had built on previously, and his encounter with Quakerism had helped orient
him in his struggle. He was concerned
with things I had never heard of or thought about—things like prophetic
obedience and the need to test his “leadings” (his personal insights and feelings) against the tradition and the
Scriptures. He didn’t “feel free” to walk away from his marriage yet, to do
anything that might create a barrier to healing the relationship, even though
it appeared to be over. He wanted to do what God wanted him to do, and he
wanted to do it in God’s time. That meant waiting for “clearness.” It meant
waiting to discern what God wanted him to do. This was his principal concern;
it was this concern that had led him back to the early writings of Friends and
to the Bible for guidance. I’ve mentioned that he was reading the prophets. The
passage I remember him speaking of most often was from Jeremiah:
Thus
says the Lord:
Stand at the crossroads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where
the good way lies; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls (Jer.6:16).
This was what he wanted to do—find his way back to the
“ancient paths,” and walk in them, and find his peace there. We talked a lot
about the prophets and our generation’s rejection of the “ancient paths,” our
efforts to forge a new way of defining “the good way,” a way rooted not in
religious tradition but in subjective, personal judgments about what was right
and wrong. How could you find your way
back to these paths?
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