Ash Wednesday and the start of Isaiah. Isaiah 1&2.
There is so much in Isaiah and we could spend a whole week or two on each chapter if we wanted. Rather I want us to get a big picture of the book leading up to the cross. Unlike Advent, Lent can be given less attention, there is not the same anticipation and eagerness. Advent comes with fires and fairy lights and decorations. Lent comes often with damp dreary weather and lengthen days of grey with lights offering little solace. With Advent we wait and move toward Christmas, a birth, new life, reasons for celebrating. Lent though also a season of waiting, is a journey toward death before new life. It reminds us of the fragility of our lives. Of how short they are in the big picture. Death, a time of mourning.
We have very much sanitised death and our mourning here in the west. We hide from it, we limit it, we minimise it. We’ve made grief uncomfortable and something to avoid or to do it very well ordered, controlled, time tabled way. As we come to Isaiah; as with Jesus in John; God doesn’t play by our rules and standards. He isn’t worried about whether we feel comfortable with His words. He calls it as it is and yet woven into His grief over the state of His people and their walk with Him He weaves in mercy, He shows them another path. He reveals what is important and asks us to join Him there.
So my prayer is that this Lenten season yes we remember we are walking to the cross but let us let God be our guide as we repent of our sin and join Him in the things that He is passionate about; humility, mercy and justice.
Isaiah 1& 2 22 Stop trusting in mere humans, who have but a breath in their nostrils. Why hold them in esteem?
Joshua's Tree Rooted 