Isaiah 30.1-18 1 Thessalonians 1 Matthew 14.1-12
Esaïe 30.1-18 1 Thessaloniciens 1 Matthieu 14.1-12
Jesaja 30.1-18 1 Thessalonicenzen 1 Mattheüs 14.1-12
Esaïe 30.1-18 1 Thessaloniciens 1 Matthieu 14.1-12
Jesaja 30.1-18 1 Thessalonicenzen 1 Mattheüs 14.1-12
Wake
up, God!
When we are struggling, as we all do at
some points in our lives, the good times past seem unimaginably far off and
unreal. Even their memory is perhaps more of a taunt than a comfort – a
reminder of how far we have fallen. “My confusion is daily before me, and
shame has covered my face.”
We try to rationalise our situation in
various ways – that we somehow deserve it, that we’ve done something terribly
wrong, or that the world is just a fundamentally unpleasant place after
all.
But the psalmist is more daring than
many of us might be. He doesn’t accept that this is the way things should be,
or that he deserves what he’s got. Neither does he stand on his own
entitlement. In the good times it was God’s actions, not his own merit, which
brought glory and success.
In the midst of his suffering and
confusion he clings to the hope of God: “Rise up! Why sleep, O God?”
That hope is difficult to see in times
of trouble, when the logic of our own predicament is oppressively close at
hand. But it is a confidence that this logic is not the meaning of life. In our
lack of understanding, of our own suffering and the suffering of others, we
protest – desperately, but also boldly - that this is not how the world is
meant to be.
A prayer of protest is a prayer of
confidence – that suffering, as real and deep and cruel as it can be, is not
the final word, that God’s reign is coming, and that his mercy is wider and
deeper and vaster than we can imagine.
“Rise up! Why sleep, O God?”
Philip Milton
Sheep to
the Slaughter, 1914.
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