The Prophet and the Newspaper by Jill Carattini

Take approximately 5 minutes to read this shortened version of yesterday's 'A Slice of Infinity'. Post comments to the blog for spiritual collaboration. Please email your prayer requests too.

“O that you would tear open the heavens and come down, that the mountains would quake at your presence!” (Isaiah 64:1).


A Slice of Infinity 'Snippets'
“We 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.
There 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” (64:6-7).

It is unavoidable when looking at injustice--even weeping over injustice--to cry foul at the other team, the other group, the other side. There are also times when looking at injustice that we would put God Himself in the dock, interrogating the one we deem distant and responsible. Yet in this incessant finger-pointing, however justifiable it might seem, we fail to see the unjust things we do ourselves, our own inconsistencies, our own ironic ways of persecuting--indeed, our own ways of contributing to the very things we lament. The ancient cry of Isaiah is one that is rightfully weighted with both an awareness of the injustice around him and admittance of his people’s own depravity, of their own guilt. Reading the prophet’s words with our daily newspaper in hand, we might well see the importance of adding to our cries for the injustice of West Africa the lament over our own involvement--and the will to turn this, too, around.

“Do not be exceedingly angry, O LORD,
and do not remember our iniquity forever.
But consider now: we are all your people” (64:8).

Indeed, Isaiah’s vision of a world that revolves around the kingship of God at the center of all things is a vision that pivots on the urgency of the present moment, shaped not by nostalgia for what once was, but remembrance for who God was, and is, and ever will be. Again and again, God stirs us back to the urgency of the present. Again and again, the Cross reminds us of the fierce urgency of now within a world in need not of more pointing fingers and dividing speeches, but of people willing to rise and work as if now we are all God’s people.

Let's endeavor to add one person to our prayers this week.