4/24/2007

On being chosen

Jeremiah 1:4-5, 17-19 - The word of the LORD came to me, saying,

"Before I formed you in the womb I knew you,
before you were born I set you apart;
I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."

"Get yourself ready! Stand up and say to them whatever I command you. Do not be terrified by them, or I will terrify you before them. Today I have made you a fortified city, an iron pillar and a bronze wall to stand against the whole land—against the kings of Judah, its officials, its priests and the people of the land. They will fight against you but will not overcome you, for I am with you and will rescue you," declares the LORD.

Have you ever hoped God would choose you for some special task? Has he given you gifts that you think could be used in a unique way to further the spread of his saving word to all nations? If so, "Get yourself ready!" Perhaps you too have been chosen before you were born for a specific purpose, much like Jeremiah.

Jeremiah didn't think he was so special though. Notice how much encouragement God had to give him right from the start. I wonder if Jeremiah thought, "What could possibly be headed my way (or what am I heading into) that is going to require so much help from God? It sounds like I'll be worse off if I try not to do what he says though. Well, I better get ready."

Stuff was going to happen that could terrify him. He had to be made tough as iron and bronze. He would need rescuing. I wonder how many of us today could handle such a message -- living in our cushy lifestyle as we do.

4/18/2007

Peace

Isaiah 57:1 - The righteous perish,
and no one ponders it in his heart;
devout men are taken away,
and no one understands
that the righteous are taken away
to be spared from evil.

I wonder how many attendees at a Christian's funeral realize they should only be sad or cry for themselves and others who are still alive. The dead "righteous" person, the Christian, is having a grand time in the afterlife. Survivors who can mange it ought to be shouting, "Yes! Woohoo! Way to go! Congratulations!" as if the deceased had just won the lottery.

Do you think that's insensitive? Stop reading this for a few moments and think about it. Stop reading! Close your eyes and think. Resume with the next paragraph after some thoughts of your own.

Then think again.

The dead Christian just got what he's been "working" for his whole life (possibly). He got what the rest of us can only look forward to. Should that make us sad? If it were any other good thing that he got, we wouldn't be. So we shouldn't be sad for his sake now that he's dead either.

I can still recall being sad, watery-eyed, at my 20-something cousin's funeral. She had had cancer for about 6 months. I was fine until I saw her little sister crying. See, I wasn't sad for my older cousin. She was fine now! I was sad for the family who would miss her. I don't think that family has been the same (with one exception) since.

Proper perspective = peace.

4/16/2007

Free lunch

Isaiah 55:1 - "Come, all you who are thirsty,
come to the waters;
and you who have no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without cost."

I wonder if there was a common saying like, "There's no such thing as a free lunch" in Isaiah's day. In this verse, God is offering a "free lunch" to everyone. It's free to us because the price was paid in full by someone else. Jesus paid the fare, the tab, the bill because there's no way we could. No amount of dish washing could ever have covered the cost. But since Jesus did step in, we can "delight in the richest of fare" -- heaven -- forever.

4/10/2007

Twinkle, twinkle

Isaiah 40:25-26 - "To whom will you compare me?
Or who is my equal?" says the Holy One.

Lift your eyes and look to the heavens:
Who created all these?
He who brings out the starry host one by one,
and calls them each by name.
Because of his great power and mighty strength,
not one of them is missing.

That's a lot of names.

I wonder if we can infer from this that no stars or other major heavenly objects have ceased to exist since the beginning of creation. Even if the universe is 10,000 years old, maybe that's not long enough for a star that scientists would consider "old" to be completely burned out or dead.

4/04/2007

A really bad boil

Isaiah 38:1 + 21 - In those days Hezekiah became ill and was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said, "This is what the LORD says: Put your house in order, because you are going to die; you will not recover."

Isaiah had said, "Prepare a poultice of figs and apply it to the boil, and he will recover."

What kind of a boil leads to death? Or wasn't it the boil itself that would have killed Hezekiah? Was it only a symptom of something else? Or was this a cancerous boil?

What was in the poultice that healed him? (It goes without saying that the Lord actually did the healing. But he might have used the chemicals in the poultice to do so.)

4/03/2007

Wha' happened?

Isaiah 37:36-37 - Then the angel of the LORD went out and put to death a hundred and eighty-five thousand men in the Assyrian camp. When the people got up the next morning—there were all the dead bodies! So Sennacherib king of Assyria broke camp and withdrew. He returned to Nineveh and stayed there.

I wonder if Sennacherib (among others) discovered all the dead soldiers on his own or if someone delivered the message to his tent -- possibly even waking him to do so.

I wonder how many soldiers were left in his army after the 185,000 were gone. There were obviously not enough left to fight with in his opinion.

I wonder what thoughts went through his mind when he first learned about his decimated troops. Did he consider that there was a connection between his boasting and the killing? Did he attribute the deaths to natural causes? What did he tell the families of the soldiers when he got back home? The truth? I doubt it. That they died gloriously in battle? Probably something like that. I wonder if he tried to silence those survivors who knew the rest of the story.