Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Isaiah chapter 2 verses 12 through 17:
12 For the Lord of hosts has a day
against all that is proud and lofty,
against all that is lifted up and high;
13 against all the cedars of Lebanon,
lofty and lifted up;
and against all the oaks of Bashan;
14 against all the high mountains,
and against all the lofty hills;
15 against every high tower,
and against every fortified wall;
16 against all the ships of Tarshish,
and against all the beautiful craft.
17 The haughtiness of people shall be humbled,
and the pride of everyone shall be brought low;
and the Lord alone will be exalted on that day.
The Prophet foretells of a day of coming leveling. All the mighty and great shall be felled. The haughty will be put into their place.
On this day money and riches will not save. Nor shall walls.
“For the Lord of hosts has a day.”
It is a day for us all.
There is a powerful imagery in a sermon on death by John Donne, no doubt preached to some of London’s mightiest in the early 17th century. In it, he reflects upon the Church and the cemetery out back:
“When a whirlewind hath blown the dust of a churchyard into the Church, and the man sweeps out the dust of the Church into the Churchyard, who will undertake to sift those dusts again and to pronounce, This is the patrician, this is the noble flowre, and this the yeomanly, this the Plebeian bran? So it the death of Iesabel expressed. They shall not say This is Iesabel; not only not wonder that it is, nor pity that it should be; but they shall not say, they shall not know, This is Iesabel.”
Neither Queen Isabel, who was buried five centuries ago nor President George H.W. Bush who shall be buried yesterday nor any of us all are any different. We all have the same fate before us. We are all mortals before God; and in the end God’s words will be true. Dust we are; and to dust we shall return.
And remembering that ought to be enough to pretty well keep everything in perspective for the time being.
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