For months I have been wrestling with this notion of “reality” and our “perceptions of reality.” Just a cursory glance at newsfeed headlines and social media outlets include all manner of realities. Heartrending humanitarian crises and atrocities. An assassination attempt. An assassination. 324 mass shootings and counting. Incendiaries and indictments. Ranting and roiling. Shutdowns, layoffs.
Dignified conversation and respectful opposition, it seems, has been replaced by wiseacres and disparate voices casting blame and exacting revenge. America is not a divided nation, but is instead, a splintered one. This summer I happened to be reading through the Old Testament and found remarkably similar situations across biblical history fraught with conspiracy, desolation, division, idolatry, revenge, and God’s judgment.
Call me crazy, but I found these discoveries to be quite comforting amid today’s pomposity.
On a macro scale we see, for example, the Israelites living under Pharoah’s oppressive rule in the first chapter of Exodus. We discover, much later in Israel’s history that the kingdom splits into two because of Rehoboam’s harsh and cruel policies. Later still, just as God had warned all the way back in Moses’ day, Israel and Judah are taken into captivity consecutively by their enemies, Assyria and Babylon, (Deut. Exodus 1; 1 Kings 12:15; 2 Kings 17 and 25).
As I traversed the history of Israel I could not help but notice that God, all along the way, not only knew what was going to happen, he often brought about a turn of affairs to fulfill his word. God commissioned particular prophets who often under harsh and abusive conditions clearly stated God’s purposes and his will, and often contradicted the false prophets who tended to tell the people what they wanted to hear.
Treachery and conspiracies exist in the NT as well. King Herod, after hearing about the birth of Jesus, the long-awaited king of the Jews, out of fear and in his fury had all the male children ages two and under put to death in Bethlehem. Some thirty years later, Jewish chief priests and the elders of the people gathered in the palace of the high priest, Caiaphas. Together they plotted to arrest Jesus by stealth and kill him because he was calling God his Father and making himself equal with God (Matt 1:1–5, 16–17; 26:3–4).
On a more grassroots level, the bible provides us with myriad examples of conspiracy, division, idolatry, and revenge. Joseph’s brothers plotted to kill him and contrived a lie to tell their father. Absalom, King David’s son, plotted to overthrow his father’s throne. Esther, being made aware of Haman’s plot against the Jews, risked her life to expose his plan. Some thirty years later, Sanballat the Horonite and Tobiah, furious with Nehemiah’s post exilic efforts to rebuild Jerusalem, conspired to trick him into believing the words of a false prophet (Gen 37:12–24; 2 Sam 15:1–17; Esther 3–4; Nehemiah 4:1–14, 6:1–2).
Sometimes our perception of reality suggests that God has forgotten or forsaken us. What we discover time and again in the Scriptures is that even when it looks like God is nowhere to be found, he is always there extending grace even in the wilderness.
The Lord, the Righteous One, from one end of the Scriptures to the other, is a stronghold to the poor, attentive to the needy, and a refuge for the oppressed. God-Father, Son, and Spirit, whose mercy never ends, whose love knows no bounds, promises us peace.
The reality is that one day the Lord our God will swallow up the covering that is cast over all peoples, the veil that is spread over all nations. He will swallow up death forever and will wipe away tears from all faces and the reproach of his people he will remove from all the earth. (Isaiah 25).
It will be said on that day, ‘Behold this is our God; we have waited for him, that he might save us. This is the Lord; we have waited for him, let us be glad and rejoice in our salvation (Isaiah 25:9).
My summer reading reminded me of the people of faith who, like Isaiah, throughout the ages have held fast to this hope in bleak places and against all odds. This is why these confessional claims are integral to a life of faith.
If the gospel is indeed public truth, then as followers of Jesus we have a great responsibility to recognize opportune moments to embody and to declare the good news of God’s kingdom. We must cup our ears regularly and listen for the melody that rises above the blather, the promise that gives hope to the war-torn and broken, to the poor and the prisoner, to our families and neighbors, our coworkers, to you and me.
Isaiah’s words, “This is our God!” provoked in my soul a yearning and a deep-seated longing to look into the eyes of the Father, Son, and Spirit and say twice like Isaiah does, “Finally! We have been waiting for you!”
Maranatha.
