Godgrown

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  Mark 12:34 pm on January 29, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Control 

  The American Dream says that you can shape your own destiny – but it seems Isaiah, and other prominent writers in the Bible, say someone else makes us who we are:

  64:8 And yet, O Lord, you are our Father.

  We are the clay, and you are the potter.

  We all are formed by your hand.

  So are we able to make our own future?  Or are we simply chiseled into being by a force greater than us?

  Let’s start with birth – you didn’t exactly ask to be born, but here you are.  You didn’t have much say in your hair or eye color, or the color of your skin…but here you are nonetheless.  But what about other factors – your intelligence?  Your social status in life?  Your income?  The health of your marriage?  Your own death?  All these things get a little hazy when it comes to your real control.

  We like to think we have control over our lives – in fact, in America, we’ve made that priority 1 — “Safety first!” they always say.  We have scuttle home from our jobs in little boxes and slip unnoticed into a garage and pull the door down behind us.  We lock our doors, and update our privacy settings on Facebook.  We want to control what influences us – of course, this is not all coming from an unhealthy place – but it quickly engenders a sense that I am in complete control – and anything that established itself as an unwanted negative influence should be worked at removing; because I am in control.

  The ancients had a good sense of balance when it comes to such things.  Proverbs really pushes the idea life is what you make it – that doing good work will yield good results.  Ecclesiastes might be the other extreme, that “everything we do is meaningless!”

  And finally, Isaiah – a book and a prophet who had seen so much – the end of the Israelites, the exile, slavery, and the return of a beaten, demoralized people.  He knows there are certain things we can’t “buckle up” for in this life – that safety cannot always come first.

  It is in these moments we remember that we are completely out of control – that we are the satellite spinning wildly around a much bigger Center. That we are clay in someone else’s hands.  This can be frightening…or it can be liberating!

  It all depends what kind of Potter is in control.

  
   

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  Mark 9:21 am on January 6, 2011 Permalink | Reply  

  Ashes to Ashes, god to Dust 

  One of the key principles in the spiritual life is learning to pay attention.

  In Isaiah 44, the prophet describes a scene where an idol maker, regarded as a highly spiritual person, is making an idol out of wood and iron.  He sculpts and crafts an image made in human likeness out of the best wood, then takes the excess wood from his divine project and uses it to start a fire and cook up some food after a long day’s work.  In humor and in irony, Isaiah reveals the pathetic existence of someone who worships the same wood he uses to cook his dinner.

  There were ancient incantations in that day where a idol-craftsman would finish his carving, then wash the eyes, mouth and ears of the sculpture to “bring it to life.”  This was a highly spiritual practice.  Isaiah mocks the ritual and mocks the idea that the creator would worship the creation… he calls the craftsmen blind, deaf, and mute (eyes, ears and mouth).

  Learning to pay attention…

  19 The person who made the idol never stops to reflect, “Why, it’s just a block of wood! I burned half of it for heat and used it to bake my bread and roast my meat. How can the rest of it be a god? Should I bow down to worship a piece of wood?”

  20 The poor, deluded fool feeds on ashes. He trusts something that can’t help him at all. Yet he cannot bring himself to ask, “Is this idol that I’m holding in my hand a lie?”

  21 “Pay attention, O Jacob, for you are my servant, O Israel. I, the Lord, made you, and I will not forget you.

  ‘Pay attention…I…made you.’

  God is calling us to wake up to reality.

  We are his wooden statues, come to life.

  Paying attention means sniffing out the systematic implications of our actions. What do we control, yet worship as if it controls us?  At what point does the TV remote control in your hand become a your leash?  When does your job slip from being a joy to being a form of slavery?  When does eating go from healthy to destructive?  Pick your poison.

  Paying attention means remembering that you are in control of the things that enter into you – through your mind, ears, and eyes.  Letting go of that awareness makes you lose control, and quickly you become the stiff wooden idol worth no more than the wood tossed in the fire.  Stop and reflect on what has control of you in this life.  With the help of God, break free of the chains and live in freedom!

  
   
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  Mark 9:14 am on December 21, 2010 Permalink | Reply  

  Multiplying Isaiahs 

  Up until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in 1946, the earliest manuscript of Isaiah was from 1000 CE, the Masoretic Text (MT). What a discovery then, to find an intact copy of Isaiah from around 150 BCE!  This scroll contains the entire book of Isaiah, an astounding 24-foot-long leather scroll (that’s a lot of cow!).  This manuscript (1QIsa) is almost identical to the MT in every way, except a few spelling mishaps and minor word variations here and there.

  Most scholars think that Isaiah 34 was written long into the Babylonian captivity – 150 years after the situation of a potential Assyrian invasion had passed – for this unnamed author, the main concern for the Jews is not Assyria, but Babylon and the nation of Edom, who betrayed Judah and helped Babylon capture Jerusalem.  There’s just no way that Isaiah could’ve lived long enough to have written the later parts of Isaiah.

  There is a complication to this theory.  If there was truly two authors (or more) penning the prophet Isaiah, then it must have been assumed as early as 300 years afterward that there was only one author.  The 1QIsa Dead Sea Scroll of Isaiah makes no indication that there should be a new voice in chapter 34, and again in chapter 40.  In fact, the switch from 39-40 is seamless – in the same column – the writer is not skipping a beat.  The same holds true with 34 – there is little indication that there should be a heading or demarkation of a new author for this new topic of Edom, Babylon, and the like.

  Why does this matter?  Well – if Isaiah son of Amoz wrote the entire book in a pre-exilic Jerusalem, it sure says something about Isaiah’s prophetic ability to see the political situation brewing 150 years into the future.

  If he didn’t write the whole book – then we have a fascinating picture of how Jews pictured authorship – fitting 2 or 3 authors together as if they were one.

  What do you think?