And let it begin with me.
Let there be peace on earth
The peace that was meant to be.
With God as our father
Brothers all are we.
Let me walk with my brother
In perfect harmony.
Let this be the moment now.
With every step I take
Let this be my solemn vow.
To take each moment
And live each moment
With peace eternally.
Let there be peace on earth,
And let it begin with me (Jackson).
The passage is directed to Jews who hope to come to the land of their ancestors, the generation taken into exile in Babylon about one hundred fifty years earlier. The present generation is living five hundred years or so before the time of Jesus. The land of their fathers has fallen into general disuse. Their sacred Temple is in ruins. They understand this as they are in slavery to the Babylonians. With all this in mind, there is little peace among them.
This latter-day messenger, often called Isaiah of the Exile, offers several Peaceable Promises.
Comfort, comfort my people, says your God. [2] Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her
that her warfare is ended, that her iniquity is pardoned, that she has received from the LORD's hand
double for all her sins.
Those first hearers need comfort in their slavery. This has been like war as they struggled to maintain their loyalty to the Lord God and their identification as His special people. So now they hear, their warfare is ended.
Dr. Page Kelley points out this promise of comfort does not gloss over the sins of the people:
received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins. Her warfare [that is], her term of bondage,
is over, and she is free to return home. Her release from bondage would have been meaningless,
however, if she had not first heard this spoken word of forgiveness (Kelley 297).
As the prophet continues in verses 3-5, he hears a messenger from God declaring, a great manifestation of God’s glory is about to be seen. In this prophetic and poetic vision, the way will be prepared in anticipation of that arrival. Valleys will be filled up. Mountains will be leveled. When this happens, all humankind will have access to God’s message.
[3] A voice cries: "In the wilderness prepare the way of the LORD, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. [4] Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low;
the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. [5] And the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
This is an assertion that God is in control. It may not be evident, but God will, indeed, straighten things up, figuratively bringing down the mountains that block our way and filling up the low places we where we tend to bog down.
The voice mentions a wilderness where preparation is to be made for that revelation of glory. There were large stretches of barren land in the Holy Land. Nothing would be planted there because experience had taught them, nothing would grow.
But there is also a spiritual sense of wilderness. Isaiah’s exiles feel lost in the wilderness, as if the Lord God had left them behind. In like manner, we can find ourselves in difficult patches, feeling unable to connect with God.
I think of a friend and roommate from college who felt terribly insignificant and alone.
Several years after we graduated from college, Ralph and I reconnected for a time. It was before e-mail was in common use, so we wrote each other through the Postal Service. In addressing the envelopes, he would never write my first name. He would call me Brother Webb or Reverend Webb or Professor Webb because I was teaching in college. He might use my first initial and call me L. Webb. After we had exchanged several letters, Ralph explained why he went out of his way to avoid calling me by my first name.
When he was growing up, his mother drilled it into his head that he was unworthy to call other people by their first names. He accepted her instruction She convinced Ralph that he really wasn’t as good as other people. I think we can say he was a wilderness wanderer.
Second Isaiah offers the peace of God to wanderers such as Ralph. The crooked ways can be made straight. The lowlands of human emotion can be filled in as God’s glory is revealed in our lives.
The truly amazing part of this promise is that when the glory of the LORD shall be revealed . . . all flesh shall see it together. The revelation of God’s glory is not for one group.
The prophet can speak these words of assurance because "the mouth of the LORD has spoken."
If we can grasp that assurance -- if we can BE grasped by that assurance, God will lead us from our private wildernesses.
Second Isaiah himself has received this assurance, but he has his doubts about how people will respond to this promise of God’s glory being revealed. He describes his hesitancy in verses 6-7:
[6] A voice says, "Cry!"
And I said, "What shall I cry?" [because] All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flower of the field. [7] The grass withers, the flower fades, when the breath of the LORD blows upon it; surely the people is grass.
The prophet is saying, in effect, “No way the glory of God is going to be revealed in a significant way. If I preach, people are just too fickle. They aren’t going to respond. They aren’t going to believe.”
The Lord agrees with Second Isaiah: It’s true: [8] The grass withers, the flower fades.
But God doesn’t stop there. People are like that grass you talk about. Left to you, it would never be true that the glory of the LORD shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together. But it will happen because the word of our God will stand for ever.
Don’t confuse the power of God with the frailty of humanity. Instead, (verses 9-10), trust me, and get up on a high mountain where you can proclaim it to people everywhere:
[9] Get you up to a high mountain, O Zion, herald of good tidings; lift up your voice with strength, O Jerusalem, herald of good tidings, lift it up, fear not; say to the cities of Judah,
"Behold your God!" [10] Behold, the Lord GOD comes with might, and his arm rules for him;
behold, his reward is with him, and his recompense before him.
As a capstone to this call to shout the glory of the Lord from the mountaintop, we are given a spectacular promise of God’s loving care:
[11] He will feed his flock like a shepherd, he will gather the lambs in his arms, he will carry them in his bosom, and gently lead those that are with young.
He will feed his flock like a shepherd--every sheep in the flock, whatever their need.
The lambs need more attention than the flock at large: he will gather the lambs in his arms.
Finally, perhaps the most fragile are the pregnant ewes who are pregnant. He will gently lead those that are with young.
The flock are the general run of adults. They need the Divine Shepherd’s watchful care. The lambs in His arms suggests our children who need more specialized care. And then, the females who will soon give birth to young ones, are those in the human flock who need extra tender guidance.
Gently leading the soon-to-be mothers is the same thought in Psalm 23 of leading the sheep beside still waters. God will provide the most basic needs of life: water to drink, a place to rest.
Those with special needs include the Ralphs among us who feel they don’t matter.
Next we have the promise of God’s greatness, the theme for the remainder of this poetic chapter. In verses 12-14, we are confronted with questions regarding God’s power. The questions are directed toward us as frail, frayed human beings. There’s really one basic question, asked several different ways: Who are we alongside God? Who are we to give Him advice? Listen to these questions:
[12] Who has measured the waters in the hollow of his hand and marked off the heavens with a span, enclosed the dust of the earth in a measure and weighed the mountains in scales and the hills in a balance?
The answer: God did all this in bringing the worlds into existence.
[13] Who has directed the Spirit of the LORD, or as his counselor has instructed him?
The answer: No mortal being.
Third question regarding God:
[14] Whom did he consult for his enlightenment, and who taught him the path of justice,
and taught him knowledge, and showed him the way of understanding?
Again the obvious answer: The Almighty Maker of Heaven and Earth didn’t need to call in a consultant to enlighten Him. The God of Tender Mercy needed no one to teach Him the path of justice. The All-Wise, All-Knowing needed no one to teach Him knowledge and give Him understanding. God asks similar questions in the latter chapters of Job when Job tries to comprehend God’s greatness.
Isaiah 40 then casts a look at the nations who do not worship the Lord God of Israel. In verse 15, those people and the gods they worship are like a drop from a bucket. They make no greater impact than the dust on the scales. In the hands of the Creator, the islands of the sea are like fine dust.
Verse 16 begins a comparison between the worship of the Lord Yahweh and the pagan religions:
All the magnificent cedars of Lebanon would not suffice for fuel for sacrifices in the Lord’s Temple nor are its beasts enough for a burnt offering.
Verse 18 looks at the gods made by men: a workman casts it, and a goldsmith overlays it with gold, and casts for it silver chains.
By contrast, [20] He who is impoverished chooses for an offering wood that will not rot; he seeks out a skilful craftsman to set up an image that will not move.
Our vision of the greatness of God begins in earnest in verse 21 and builds up to the end of the chapter. Twice the prophet asks: Have you not known? Have you not heard the truth concerning God? This 21st verse asks two additional questions:
Has it not been told you from the beginning? Have you not understood from the foundations of the earth? Though posed as questions, these can be reworded as statements: You should have known from the beginning. You should have understood from the very foundations of the earth.
In verse 22, God is high and exalted above the earth. By contrast, we are like insects:
It is he who sits above the circle of the earth, and its inhabitants are like grasshoppers.
To God, the heavens above us are no more than a curtain or a tent for His dwelling.
Back in verse 6, the prophet despairs that all humanity is as temporary as grass. And God agrees. But He goes on to say the word of God endures forever. We return to that same thought, starting in verse 22 regarding human beings who sit in places of power:
[God] brings princes to nought, and makes the rulers of the earth as nothing. [24] Scarcely are they planted, scarcely sown, scarcely has their stem taken root in the earth, when he blows upon them, and they wither, and the tempest carries them off like stubble.
We have further contrast starting in verse 25, turning again to the greatness of God:
[25] To whom then will you compare me, that I should be like him? says the Holy One.
[26] Lift up your eyes on high and see: who created these? He who brings out their host by number,
calling them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and because he is strong in power not one is missing. [27] Why do you say, O Jacob, and speak, O Israel, "My way is hid from the LORD, and my right is disregarded by my God"?
PROMISE OF GOD’S POWER IN OUR LIVES
Those questions -- Have you not known? Have you not heard? -- come again in verse 28.
No more negative statements about the lesser so-called gods. This is all about the power of the One True God:
The LORD is the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary, his understanding is unsearchable.
Not only is ours a powerful God:
[29] He gives power to the faint, and to him who has no might he increases strength.
To emphasize God’s provision of power to us, He concludes in verses 30-31that this power comes in all stages of life. We think of the youthful years as the height of physical prowess, but that’s not always the case:
[30] Even youths shall faint and be weary, and young men shall fall exhausted.
The final verse shows three different conditions of life when God’s renewal comes to us, each time bringing peace in a different way.
[31] but they who wait for the LORD shall renew their strength,
There are times we think we can fly like Superman: they shall mount up with wings like eagles.
And sometimes we are able to do almost superhuman things in the power of God.
Then there are more ordinary times for more ordinary work: they shall run and not be weary.
Still other times, when we have little strength, God is with us then as well: they shall walk and not faint.
When novelist Anne Lamott's son was a toddler, she had an experience any parent or grandparent would long remember.
Ms Lamott lives in a suburb of San Franciso, but she wanted to get away from the big city and concentrate on writing. So she rented a condominium for herself and her son in the resort area of Lake Tahoe near the border of California and Nevada.
This was one of those condos with drapes that can block out all the light. Presumably for people who like to party all night and then sleep all day.
But Ms Lamott thought these blinds also were ideal for settling her two-year-old down for his daytime naps. She put her son to be in a portable crib the condo provided. She kept the drapes closed and shut the door, leaving him in total darkness. Then she could focus on her writing just a few feet away in the next room.
One day, as she was trying to concentrate on her writing, her son was knocking on the door between his room and hers. He had waked up and climbed out of the crib as children that age learn to do. In the dark, he managed to find his way to the door. And he started calling out for his mommy.
Ms Lamott went to put him back in his bed and settle him back to sleep. But, horror of horrors, somehow, he managed to push the lock button on the doorknob. He was locked away from his mother.
She tried to tell him how to shake the button loose, but he didn’t understand. Besides, he couldn’t see the doorknob in the dark. He started crying, and that made her sob to herself. She had to do something. So she called the manager’s office at the condo and left a message. When they didn’t respond right away, she called the rental agency and left a message with them. This made it more complicated but she still wasn’t getting to her son.
While hoping and wishing for help to get there, Ms Lamott thought of one thing that might work: She lay down flat on her stomach and slid her fingers into that narrow space between the bottom of the door and the carpet. Then she told her son to lie down and put his fingers under the door. Of course, she had to tell him that several times before he got the message.
Finally, he did and then quieted down. They stayed like that for what seemed like a long time, until help came. As he held his mother’s fingers in the dark, peace came to him and to her (Ramsey).
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