Posts Tagged: exile
“No Hopeless People”
My Dear N______,
No, N______, you are most definitely not hopeless.
When I feel hopeless (as I often do), I try to remember that there is hope, and then there is the feeling of hope. They are not the same thing, as you seem to intuit, based on some things you said in your email report.
I was recently studying more deeply Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones in Ezekiel 37:1-14. The people of Judah had been taken into exile by the Babylonian Empire, and they felt hopeless. They were just a bunch of very dead, dry bones that had not even had a decent burial. They were as good as dead—or as bad as dead. Even their hope was dead.
And then, God showed up and said, “Yep, you’re dead! You got that right!”
But that wasn’t the only thing that God said. God also asked a question to the prophet: “Son of man, can these bones live again?”
And the prophet threw the question back in God’s face by saying, “LORD God, you know.” Some people regard Ezekiel’s response as showing his trust in God’s power and intentions. I don’t. I think the prophet himself sounds pretty discouraged and skeptical. Maybe that is because I myself am often discouraged and skeptical.
In any case, in Ezekiel’s vision the bones came together, were covered with skin, breath entered them again, and they stood on their feet.
I frequently think that I know how Judah felt in exile. Exile comes in all shapes and sizes. Being exiled politically is a horrible thing. Being exiled from your own family is too.
But the worst form of exile, I think, is being exiled from your better self. That is exile indeed.
However, I believe (at least in my better moments) that there is a God who shows up in my/our exile and who is not simply the God of my hope, but the God of my hopelessness. I believe that God is also the one for whom there are no hopeless people or hopeless situations. I don’t always feel that it is true, but I will not allow Hope to be held captive by my feelings. In fact, Hope can’t be held captive by anything or anyone. Hope, like love, always wins in the end.
“Power Imparted, Steady Progress”
“27 Why do you say, O Jacob,
and speak, O Israel,
“My way is hidden from the LORD,
and my right is disregarded by my God”?
28 Have you not known? Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He does not faint or grow weary;
his understanding is unsearchable.
29 He gives power to the faint,
and to him who has no might he increases strength.
30 Even youths shall faint and be weary,
and young men shall fall exhausted;
31 but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength;
they shall mount up with wings like eagles;
they shall run and not be weary;
they shall walk and not faint.”
(Isaiah 40:27–31 The Holy Bible, English Standard Version)
Have you ever felt as if you simply didn’t have the strength to do what you need to do?
Today, you say?
Every day, you say?
You are not alone. That feeling of insufficiency is about as common to human beings as being human is. If you lack such a feeling, you might want to seek counseling.
But there are times in our lives when insufficiency isn’t a feeling. It is a dismal, even frightening, reality.
This was the case for those who were in exile in Babylon in the sixth century B.C. They weren’t sure that their God had any power, and that were flat out certain that they didn’t.
The prophetic author of Isaiah 40-66 came crashing into their crushing sense of insufficiency with a bold, almost unbelievable word. God was powerful, and God was empowering. I’m sure that a lot of the exiles had a hard time believing it. God is going to empower us to go back home to Judah? I don’t think so!
Here are some good words from Derek Kidner on this familiar Scripture. In this case, familiarity does not breed contempt. There are always fresh insights to leap out from this passage from Isaiah 40:27-31.
“The ‘very present help’. 27 The wrong inference from God’s transcendence is that he is too great to care; the right one is that he is too great to fail (28); there is no point at which things ‘get on top of’ him. But vs 29-31 make the big transition from power exercised to power imparted, to be experienced through the faith expressed in the word hope (or ‘wait’; cf. on 25:9). So the final reminder of human frailty (30) is forward looking; it clears the way for trust and the transcending of natural resources. The phrase renew their strength (31) is (lit.) ‘change strength’, as one might change into fresh clothes or exchange an old thing for a new. It may be significant that the three final metaphors speak of overcoming one natural impossibility and two natural weaknesses, ending on the note of steady progress.”[1]
Our God is not intimidated by impossibilities or natural weaknesses. God not only has power. God also gives power to the powerless. He does this in such a way that steady progress becomes possible.
But God’s power demands a human response. And this response is by no means easy. Our response is to wait on the LORD.
I don’t like waiting on anyone—not even if it is Anyone with a capital “A”! I can help God (or so I think). But waiting? Nope! I can also serve God, even if I serve mainly in an advisory capacity. But waiting? Really, God?! You want me to do that?!
There is an old saying that “Good things come to those who wait.” Maybe God things also come to those
who wait.
[1]Derek Kidner, Isaiah, New Bible Commentary: 21st Century Edition; ed. D. A Carson et al.; Accordance electronic ed. (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 655.
DOWN TO EARTH BELIEVER
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