Daily Prophets
Day 180
“Arise, shine for your light has dawned. The Presence of God has shone upon you. Raise your eyes and see; they have all gathered and come to you. Your sons shall be brought from afar and your daughters like babes on shoulders. For in anger I struck you down but in compassion I take you back. And you shall know that I, God, am your Savior and I, the Mighty One of Jacob am your Redeemer.”(Isaiah 60:1,4,10,16).
As the end of our exile nears, Second Isaiah is imbuing the people with both the courage and the strength to return to Jerusalem/Judah with the knowledge of God’s love and the way of living that will ensure longevity in the land. The first verse above is very telling; the people have to be told to rise and shine because their glory, their light has dawned. God’s Presence is shining on them and, it seems, they are unaware of this truth. It is still true today; people who think and proclaim that God’s Presence is upon them and their light is the only light are usually the charlatans who only are concerned with their welfare, power and prestige, not God’s nor anyone else’s. The people that God shines on and whose own light is dawning and beginning to shine, just keep working for God and for humanity. Second Isaiah is speaking to two groups of people, the downtrodden who are so ashamed, guilty and saddened by their own actions that exiled them and the second group; the people who do T’Shuvah and are moving forward in their service to and for God without need for recognition nor reward. Their reward is the reconnection with God and humanity.
“Raise up your eyes and see” is a command from God to Abraham in Genesis. It is still a command from God to all of us. We are all together, we are all brought back from afar, yet we don’t notice it, we don’t “see”! What stops us from seeing is the fact that we are not raising up our eyes. We are either looking down at the ground, back at yesterday, forward into tomorrow, etc and not looking at the beauty and the joy, the power and the opportunity of today, of right here, right now. We are so stuck on looking at our own reflections, we are unable to “raise our eyes and see” what God is showing us, what God is giving to us and where God is leading us, so we keep taking the wrong turns and the wrong moves and wind up stuck in exile and stuck in/on ourselves. Raising up our eyes is the prophet’s reminder that we can no longer stay blind to God’s desires, God’s commands, God’s ways and God’s love. Doing so keeps us in exile and raising up our eyes and truly seeing sets us free. The question each of us has to ask and answer for ourselves is: Exile or Freedom; both take work to get to, one is the work of pride, mendacity, willful blindness and the other is the work of seeing, doing, guarding and connecting to God’s will, God’s ways and God’s love. Which are you choosing today?
The last two verses speak so loudly and accurately to me. God’s anger is but for a moment, God’s anger is the last resort to get our attention and wake us up and it doesn’t last! God is compassion, God is waiting for us to return, God is kindness and love-even in God’s anger is love and the desire for us to return. God is our Savior and our Redeemer and we need to recognize the myriad of times God is saving us, redeeming us while we keep rejecting God’s saving and redeeming well as God’s love. We do this rejecting through our senseless hatred of each other, through our taking unfair advantage of the poor, the needy, the voiceless and the powerless. We do this by denying each and every person their dignity and worth, judging them poorly because we can, engaging in deception of another(s) because of our need to engage in self-deception, proclaim our fealty to God while actually serving idols of our own making, etc. We are being told by Second Isaiah, all of these actions are forgiven-God is redeeming and saving us again! I just wonder if we will join in with God or, once again, accept the saving and redeeming while scheming in our own hearts for the time we can once again be in charge?
Rabbi Heschel’s words “Second Isaiah’s task is to give “power to the faint” and “strength to him who has no might”(40:29)…he calls upon her (Israel) to sing and rejoice”(The Prophets pg.153), have special meaning to those of us in recovery. We are hyper aware of God’s saving us and redeeming us. We are grateful for God waking us up, helping us see truth and returning us to our own humanity. God’s redemption allows us to rejoin humanity and bring our unique talents to the world so as to help instead of harm, to add instead of take and to love instead of hate. In recovery, raising up our eyes is the key to our continued joy, love and serenity. Thank you God is our refrain daily and many times each day.
I have been awakened so many times in my recovery. I am grateful to God for waking me up in a jail cell in Van Nuys, Ca. In December of 1986. I am grateful for God’s saving power ever since. I am also grateful for the love God shows me each and every day. I understand each experience in my life in a different light, as I read this passage. God saves me and redeems me from myself and my false pride and my errors daily. What I see as punishment I understand now as refinement and God getting my attention, again! I am in awe of God’s love and care, I am grateful for God’s direction and guidance and I am choosing Freedom today and, please God, everyday. Stay safe and God Bless, Rabbi Mark