Today's Daily Lesson comes from Isaiah chapter 59 verses 15 through 16:
15 Truth is lacking,
and whoever turns from evil is despoiled.
The Lord saw it, and it displeased him
that there was no justice.
16 He saw that there was no one,
and was appalled that there was no one to intervene.
This word intervene is a powerful one. When I read I think of Alan and Nancy Bean and the group "Friends of Justice". This is the group that intervened after scores of black folks were arrested by the witness of a dirty law enforcement officer in Nancy's hometown Tulia, Texas.
Intervening wasn't popular. The officer had earned Texas Lawman of the Year for his uncanny ability to find drugs on poor people of color. And after the arrests the town newspaper ran a story headlined approving of the arrests: "Tulia Streets Cleared of Garbage". Only it was the witness of the lawman which was garbage; and the Friends of Justice dug through it. That didn't make them popular at all; but they intervened and finally truth had its day in court.
That was a pretty exceptional case. But there's lots of other ways to intervene also -- big and small.
Only the thing is, in order to do so we have to open our eyes and our ears and then our mouths -- which is a really hard thing to do. And that's probably why the Lesson from Isaiah today says there was "no one to intervene."
And that also probably why we read Isaiah say elsewhere, "Here I am Lord, send me."
Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.
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