Daily Lesson for December 10, 2014

Today's daily lesson comes from Isaiah chapter 6 verses 8 through 

8 And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am! Send me.” 9 And he said, “Go, and say to this people:
“‘Keep on hearing, but do not understand;
keep on seeing, but do not perceive.’
10 Make the heart of this people dull,
and their ears heavy,
and blind their eyes;
lest they see with their eyes,
and hear with their ears,
and understand with their hearts,
and turn and be healed.”
11 Then I said, “How long, O Lord?”
And he said:
“Until cities lie waste
without inhabitant,
and houses without people,
and the land is a desolate waste,
12 and the Lord removes people far away,
and the forsaken places are many in the midst of the land.
13 And though a tenth remain in it,
it will be burned again,
like a terebinth or an oak,
whose stump remains
when it is felled.”
The holy seed is its stump.

Here's a Scripture I've had trouble with. The LORD sends his Prophet to go and preach a word which is obviously going to be rejected. He is to keep on preaching to the people until their cities are razed by foreign armies, and their inhabitants carried off into bondage, and their nation destroyed like a mighty oak burned to the ground. In fact it seems like the LORD is actually telling the message to keep on preaching in order to actually make the people turn a deaf hear to him. Disturbing!  Even worse, Jesus quoted this very same passage, saying he came to do the same -- "to close the eyes so they will not see and the ears so they will not understand."

What?  Why would God send His messenger to do that?

This passage really bothered me until about a year ago when I was listening to a friend who is a drug and alcohol counselor in a panel discussion on addiction.  Someone asked the panel if we ought to keep reaching out to people trapped by addiction and try to get them in recovery, even though they are obviously not yet ready to get clean. My friend said yes, definitely we should keep reaching out and trying until they hit bottom. "Then, when they finally hit their bottom," he said, "they will know where to find help."

It was after hearing my friend talk that I saw something in this Scripture I had never seen before; I saw the grace in it.     It is there at the very end -- after the mighty oak is cut down and burned. The tree is felled; and yet a seed remains. A tiny, little seed that is probably invisible to they eye. Yet a seed, nonetheless. A a "holy seed", no less.

If you are tired of reaching out, tired of having the same conversations, exhausted and without hope that anything you're saying will ever get through, well, keep trying.  They may have to hit bottom.  They do have to hit bottom. and in doing so, they may have to lose everything. But keep trying. Keep trying, because when all is lost they may have nothing left except an idea of where to find help. And that shall be enough; because that shall be the seed of their salvation.