Daily Lesson for July 21, 2020

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Isaiah chapter 35 verses 8 through 10:

8

A highway shall be there,

    and it shall be called the Holy Way;

the unclean shall not travel on it,

    but it shall be for God’s people;

    no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray.

9

No lion shall be there,

    nor shall any ravenous beast come up on it;

they shall not be found there,

    but the redeemed shall walk there.

10

And the ransomed of the Lord shall return,

    and come to Zion with singing;

everlasting joy shall be upon their heads;

    they shall obtain joy and gladness,

    and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.

In the Bible the word "holiness" means whole, complete, or full of integrity.  It comes from the word "holo" which means complete or whole.  A hologram is a full, complete, and whole. three dimensional picture.  A holocaust is a full, complete, and whole burning. Holiness is the state of being a full, complete, and whole person or community.

William Sloane Coffin used to say during the Vietnam War that the way forward for us as a nation was not purity but holiness, not innocence but integrity.

It is too late for us to feign innocence.  Look at us.  Look at our ambiguities, our compromises, our original sins.  We are not an innocent people.  And our religion does not make us so.  It's promise rather, as Carlyle Marney said, is not to make us innocent, but to make us responsible.  "Responsible sinners," he said, is what God can make of us.

It is too late to be innocent.  But we can still be whole.  We can be complete.  We can have integrity.

"And a highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Way of Integrity".

And it's high time we take it.

It's time we take it and time we expect it also.

NOTE: We are reading the Bible this year all the way through.  Tomorrow's Lesson comes from Isaiah chapters 37-39; and Psalm 76.