By Rebecca Stoltzfus, president
Scripture: Isaiah 64:1-4, 5-9 (NRSV)
There is no doubt; these are turbulent and disturbing times. I read from diverse news outlets each morning, and I am deeply troubled. I am troubled by the headlines describing violence, hatred and trauma. I am also troubled by conflicting portrayals of events. Who can I trust? Where is the truth found?
My distress is echoed across time with remarkable accuracy by the Hebrew prophet, Isaiah, who spoke today’s text to God around 2,700 years ago. In essence: Please, please, God, fix this! Fix us! Fix our relationship with You!
In verse 7 of this plea for help, one translation of the Hebrew is that God’s people have melted. We have lost our form, our integrity. We can no longer do God’s work because we have become a puddle on the floor, a soft wet lump of clay.
Like Isaiah, we implore God: be our potter! Don’t leave us here in this puddle — as this soft lump reading the news and feeling dismayed and frightened! Make us into something useful!
Maybe, we melted because we had to be remade. Maybe, this Advent, we need to feel our soft “clayness” because the Potter is getting ready to throw us on the wheel: whump. To turn us and shape us with firm and skillful hands. Maybe we are still too lumpy, and will need to be broken down and reworked again.
Until. Until, we are formed again in God’s image. Ready to be used to help God fix this.
Scripture: Isaiah 64:1-4, 5-9 (NRSV)
O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, so that the mountains would quake at your presence— 2as when fire kindles brushwood and the fire causes water to boil— to make your name known to your adversaries, so that the nations might tremble at your presence! 3When you did awesome deeds that we did not expect, you came down, the mountains quaked at your presence. 4From ages past no one has heard, no ear has perceived, no eye has seen any God besides you, who works for those who wait for him. 5You meet those who gladly do right, those who remember you in your ways. But you were angry, and we sinned; because you hid yourself we transgressed.
6We have all become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy cloth. We all fade like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away. 7There is no one who calls on your name, or attempts to take hold of you; for you have hidden your face from us, and have delivered us into the hand of our iniquity. 8Yet, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. 9Do not be exceedingly angry, O Lord, and do not remember iniquity forever. Now consider, we are all your people.