Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Isaiah chapter 3 verses 8 and 13 through 15:
8 For Jerusalem has stumbled
and Judah has fallen,
because their speech and their deeds are against the Lord,
defying his glorious presence.
13 The Lord rises to argue his case;
he stands to judge the peoples.
14 The Lord enters into judgement
with the elders and princes of his people:
It is you who have devoured the vineyard;
the spoil of the poor is in your houses.
15 What do you mean by crushing my people,
by grinding the face of the poor? says the Lord God of hosts.
The rulers of Judah have come to a point of shamelessness. No longer is there embarrassment about the existence of the poor among them. Now the poor have become something to be exploited and blamed. And, brazenly, the leaders brag of the advantage they take.
What we see here is a vile state of normalization of exploitation and oppression. The nation has become inured to it — like a frog sitting in increasingly scalding water. Soon the water will boil the frog to death; but the frog just shrugs its shoulders.
Yet God does not simply shrug God’s shoulders. God rouses. God stirs. God cares.
God cares enough to intervene — to rise up and thwart the plans of the vile and evil, to shake the nation from its complacency, and renew its righteous light.
This is the meaning of the Advent. God comes to intervene, and set the nation on a more righteous path.
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