Daily Prophets
Day 174
“Fear not, you will not be shamed; do not cringe, you shall not be disgraced. For you shall forget the reproach of your youth…the Holy One of Israel will redeem you. For a little while I forsook you, but with great compassion I will bring you back. In slight anger, for a moment, I hid My face from you; but with everlasting kindness I will take you back in love. My kindness shall not move from you and My covenant of wholeness shall not be shaken…”(Isaiah 54:4,5,7,8).
The prophet is calling out to all of us to not get lost in fear, shame, disgrace, and pity. The Hebrew for “Fear not” is in the command form and I believe that this is intentional. The prophet and God are aware of humanity’s pension to either be the best or the worst, live in either/or and live in the arrogance of being the best and the brightest or the worst and the dumbest. When we are down, we beat ourselves up and/or blame another-in many cases God-rather than seeing our errors, repairing them and moving forward. “Fear not” is the command to get of our tuches’ and take some action.
The first action is to allow God to redeem us. I say allow because God, as all the prophets tell us, always wants our return and to redeem us and it is we, the people who reject God’s call and the call of the prophets to be redeemed. We live in a fantasy that we are already redeemed and we are doing everything correctly! God is calling us back, to redeem us and to clean us of our past errors and transgressions. God is telling us that the past doesn’t matter and doesn’t weigh us down, if we are willing to be redeemed, if we are willing go let go of shame and disgrace as well as our past ways of being.
The third verse above is the saddest and the happiest as well as one of the most profound verses in the Bible to me. God acknowledges that God had to let us go because we would not listen, we would not heed and we would not return to God’s ways and God’s fold. That God had to forsake us, leave us to our own devices, speaks to the sorrow and sadness that God experienced because of our actions. How sad it is for us to experience the abject loneliness of being cut off from our source!
Yet, God doesn’t hold a grudge like humans do, thank God. In compassion and love, God takes us back, God returns to being present and a presence in our living. Now, are we willing to be a presence in God’s world? We are shown extreme kindness and love, unconditional love and kindness because we can always return to God; are we committed to do the same for everyone else? Are we willing to surrender our hatred and our worship of power to be connected to another and to God? What do we have to do to surrender our lust for control and deception and accept our part of the covenant with God and the world?
Rabbi Heschel, in teaching about the last 2 verses above says: “Sins affect His attitude temporarily; they cannot alter His relationship radically…Is it conceivable that sin, the work of man, should destroy what is intimately divine and eternal? He stresses the contrast between the wisdom of God’s works and the limited worth of human deeds, the eternity of God’s love and temporariness of His wrath.”(The Prophets pg. 153/157). We forget that God is so far above our pettiness and pride, envy and enmity, so we attribute our attitudes and our spiritual illnesses/immaturity to God. Rabbi Heschel is reminding us that God’s relationship with us is eternal and, try as we might, we will be returning to God when we die. Yet, we also have the opportunity each and every day to hold fast to the covenant of peace/wholeness, the love and kindness, and the redemption and return that God provides for and to us. Holding fast to the covenant now, enlarges our living, lifts us up and provides a platform of joy, meaning and fulfillment. Will you join God today?
In recovery, joining with God is our foundation. We are living examples of God’s grace, God’s power of redemption, God’s kindness and God’s love. We would not have been able to stay in recovery without acknowledging all of what the prophet is speaking about. We are redeemed by God because no human power could have helped us out of our deep hole, our deception and our indecency. While we were in it, it felt right and okay, it wasn’t until God woke us up, in many different ways, that we were able to see the truth and continue to uncover more and more truth and connection to God and to another(s). We hold fast to our new covenant of wholeness, friendship, and love with God each and every day.
I have lived in fear many times in my life. What I have realized in my recovery is the fear I am in is fear of forsaking God. I know I will, I know how imperfect I am and I keep working at being more and more aware of when I am using God’s kindness for my rather than for service to another(s). I am aware of when God forsakes me because it is the only way to get my attention and I am aware of when I believe God is forsaking me and really God is showing me a new and different path. I am also eternally grateful that God continues to show me kindnesses and love, redeems me and forgives me. I am grateful for all of God’s messengers around me who bring me this message of love and redemption from God. I pray that I can be more temporary in my wrath and more eternal in my love each day. I pray that I surrender hurt and hatred more each day as well. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark