Daily Lesson for June 24, 2020

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Isaiah chapter 48 verses 12 and 13:

Listen to me, O Jacob,
    and Israel, whom I called:
I am He; I am the first,
    and I am the last.
13
My hand laid the foundation of the earth,
    and my right hand spread out the heavens;
when I summon them,
    they stand at attention.

Just before we dedicate a child at Church there is a moment when the Gloria is sung, all the people stand, and the parents and grandparents walk forward with the infant child in a parent’s arms:

“Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son,
And to the Holy Ghost,
As it was in the beginning,
Is now and ever shall be,
World without end, amen.
Amen.”

It is the most sacred moment. The people rise.  And the hairs on the arms stand on end with them. Tears roll down the cheeks from the eyes of the aged. It is a wellspring of life. A fountain in a dry and weary land.

And the LORD is in the Holy Temple.

Be at peace in your souls, dear friends. Through it all — through slavery in Egypt, and evil in Israel, and injustice in Judah, and captivity in Babylonian to last a whole generation; nevertheless God laid the foundation in the firmament, and spread the heavens, and when God summons they too stand at attention.

We may be in Babylon for a while. Perhaps a whole generation. It may get worse before it gets better. But even there we learn to sing the songs in the strange land. And our voices rise in praise in the firmament of the heavens. For from age to age God is the same. Alpha and Omega.  Our beginning and our end.

And in the end, our hope — that “all thing s shall be well; and all manner of things shall be well.”

Amen. And amen.

NOTE we are reading the whole Bible through this year.  Over the weekend we’ll read 2 Kings 19; Psalms 46, 80, and 135; and Isaiah 49-58.