Isaiah 47 – A
lament for Babylon. “She” will be humiliated, no longer be “called sovereign
lady of the kingdom” (47:5). The “spells” you have used, the “advisers” you
have consulted will be of no use now. “Let them come forward now and save you,
these who analyze the heavens, who study the stars and announce month by month
what will happen to you next” (47:13).
Isaiah 48 – Yahweh
speaks: “Things now past I once revealed long ago, they went out from my mouth
and I proclaimed them; then suddenly I acted and they happened. For I knew you
to be obstinate, your neck and iron bar, your forehead bronze” (48:3-4). He
reveals new things – things not heard of nor revealed by God before since he
thinks they are “treacherous” (48:8). Yahweh says it is for His sake “only have
I acted” (48:11) to keep anyone from claiming His glory. “I am the first, I am
also the last. My hand laid the foundations of earth and my right hand spread
out the heavens” (48:12).
“If only you had been alert to my commandments, your
happiness would have been like a river, your integrity like the waves of the
sea. Your children would have would been numbered like the sand, your
descendants as many as its grains. Never would your name have been cut off or
blotted out before me” (48:18-19). But now Yahweh has redeemed the, guided them
through the deserts.
Isaiah 49 – About
the call of the prophet. Yahweh called him before he was born. “He made my
mouth a sharp sword, and hid me in the shadow of his hand” (49:2). Isaiah
thought his concerns were all his and that he had “toiled in vain” (49:4) over
the years. But now he sees that he was “honored in the eyes of Yahweh, my God
was my strength” (49:5b). And not only has he been a light for the tribes of
Jacob and the survivors of Israel, he is told by God, “I will make you the
light of the nations so that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth”
(49:6). Isaiah tells us that Yahweh
never deserts those he loves. “Does a woman forget her baby at the breast,
or fail to cherish the son of her womb? Yet even if these forget, I will never
forget you” (49:14-15).
From Leadings: A Catholic’s Journey Through
Quakerism
Part 39
As I have said before, my
story is very ecumenical. I had no firm religious home from which to start
out, and no one tradition has shaped the road I have traveled. I was baptized
as a child into the Episcopal Church, made the decision in college to join the
Catholic Church, lost my faith in God not long after that, and only found my
way back because my faith was revived through an encounter with early Quaker
Christianity. Today I am a Catholic again, but I am not here to trumpet the
spiritual supremacy of any one tradition. I have reasons to be back that I
think are compelling, but I hope that
what my story reveals is God’s ubiquitous presence and the grace that draws us
to him. The great obstacles to faith in my life have been the idols of modernity – radical secularism,
philosophical materialism, and political ideology – idols that seem compelling
and convincing in many ways. But my experience and my testimony is that
these idols can never explain or give expression to the deepest realities of
our existence as human beings. For this we must turn back to the great God of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who is present for us in Christ.
There is yet another purpose in my writing this account of
my religious journey: to seek a
discerning response to the insights and openings I think I have been given.
I say “I think” because the more I reflect on God – his unimaginable
transcendence – and on the insurmountable limitations under which we human
beings operate, the more I realize how
little I can ever say for sure about “him.” This is about faith, not
scientific knowledge, but it seems a necessary faith to me, and scientific knowledge will never answer the
needs of our deepest nature. One of the great insights of Quaker Christians
is that God continues to reveal his reality and his truth to those who join
themselves to him in faith, and perhaps because I have been so shaped by
Friends, I have come to see the things
God has opened to me in my journey as things I am asked to share and lay before
the believing community for their review and prayerful consideration. I am
not a religious scholar, but I think the dialogue about faith and the truth it
penetrates must do on among all of us – those trained in philosophy, religious
doctrine, and history, biblical scholars, and even those of us who are “only”
believers.
The vision I offer is
at heart a plea for unity. I hope that Catholics who read my story may find
in the message and spirituality of Friends an approach to the gospel that is
both challenging and complementary to the faith they hold and practice; it is
also my hope that Friends who read it might
find their way back to the outward testimonies and forms that I believe are
necessary to sustain the gospel truths on which their vision rests. And as
for those who do not believe – as I did not for so many years – I hope that if
they read my story they too might find in it a way around the barriers our
secular and skeptical world erects to separate them from the profound truths
and rewards religious faith attempts to penetrate and make available t us. We
are one human creation. God seeks us for
his own, that we might have the life he offers to us in all its fullness
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