Isaiah 58. Let’s just pause for a moment and look at Isaiah 58.

“Is this not the fast which I choose,
To loosen the bonds of wickedness,
To undo the bands of the yoke,
And to let the oppressed go free
And break every yoke?
Is it not to divide your bread with the hungry
And bring the homeless poor into the house;
When you see the naked, to cover him;
And not to hide yourself from your own flesh?
Then your light will break out like the dawn,
And your recovery will speedily spring forth;
And your righteousness will go before you;
The glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
You will cry, and He will say, ‘Here I Am’
If you remove the yoke from your midst,
The pointing of the finger and speaking wickedness,
And if you give yourself to the hungry
And satisfy the desire of the afflicted,
Then your light will rise in darkness
And your gloom will become like midday.
And the LORD will continually guide you,
And satisfy your desire in scorched places,
And give strength to your bones;
And you will be like a watered garden,
And like a spring of water whose waters do not fail.”
(Isaiah 58:6-11, New American Standard Bible)

I can’t claim to really understand most of the book of Isaiah. It has intimidated me for most of my life. Though I have definitely been feeling an itch to study it, lately. (More, Lord. Help, Lord!)

I am not in a position to give a stunning exposition of the words of this chapter… or any of the book. But a few things do seem rather clear to me in this passage.

The Lord is answering Israel’s accusing question: Why is He not acting in response to their fasts? Why are they not seeing prosperity and justice?

His answer. Stop oppressing people and serving yourselves. Stop striving with one another and exalting yourselves. Walk out justice. Care for the poor and the hurting. Liberate the oppressed. Help the needy and the afflicted.

This is what God requires of His people. He loves justice. The church should do more than ask God to make things right. They should do their part in bringing forth justice.

That, in essence, is what I believe CRI does. They serve the afflicted. They give of themselves. They pour themselves out to help those who are hurting and in need. And they have an incredible open door to bring the light of true hope into the midst of devastation and tragedy.

It’s beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

John 14-16 is presently one of my favorite passages in the Bible. Jesus’ words. He speaks a great deal about three of my favorite topics: Holy Spirit, hope, and love.

Actually, now that I think of it, the Holy Spirit and hope are THE two topics that I am actually highlighting in my current Bible. And love is something I have been seriously focusing on for the last 5 months. No wonder I love this passage so much!

Throughout His dialogue, Jesus elaborates several times on the immanent sending of the Holy Spirit and how this person of the Trinity would serve and help us. (Ah! God’s humility!) I love it when one person of the Trinity talks about another person of the Trinity. They actually do it quite a bit. It’s beautiful! If anyone knows about God and has something to say about God… it’s God.

The hope topic isn’t necessarily evident in a quick scan of the passage. This is primarily because he uses the language of peace, joy, and believing.

And then we have love. Jesus keeps coming back to this theme. And He especially focuses on defining love as obedience.

This post was originally going to be about obedience. I was having one of those really good conversations with the Holy Spirit that felt like it needed to overflow into verbal expression. But then, as I sat down to write… I realized that I wanted to talk about a lot of things from this passage. And that I was so enamored with the other two subjects that I could not leave them alone in order to maintain some level of focus for this post.

So we have, instead, an introduction. I have decided, in my failed attempt to stay on the one topic, to start a tiny series of posts on John 14-16.

I’m not looking at the passage right now. In fact, I haven’t for a few days. So right now I am simply talking from what has stuck with me in the last few months as I have been looking at it and talking to the Lord about it.

From those recollections of the things that have most struck me, I would say that these three topics are essentially the three main themes of this passage. If I sat down and looked at it more analytically, I might change my stance a bit. But, my study of the Bible happens in the context of relationship and primarily exists as dialogue with God about God. (Let us all remember, prayer and love are literally my primary occupation. Sigh… I love life as an intercessory missionary. Apart from being at the core of my job description, though, these are truly what we are called to as Christians.)

So, as I talk about this passage, I will be emphasizing the things that have been the highlights of these “conversations” with God. So, whether hope, Holy Spirit, and love=obedience are the three main themes of this passage or not… I can almost guarantee that they will be the three main themes of this little series.

I’m not going to make any promises about how quickly these posts will be written. I am simply going to state my intent to write them and follow through with that at whatever pace my schedule allows.

I also cannot make any guarantees concerning the length of the series. I anticipate that there will probably be three posts, one for each topic. But… then again… I anticipated, upon sitting down to blog, that I was writing one post about obedience. And now… here I am, introducing a series. So who knows what this will look like when all is said and done.

In any case, I am excited about it. This is the stuff that is moving my heart. I love to talk about the things that move my heart. (Now that I have a heart that moves and all. Thank You, God, for reviving the heart that I spent so many years trying to numb and deaden!)

Yay fun!

Over the last several months, I have become quite accustomed to crying. Previously, I simply wasn’t a crier. Tears were rare. Over the last year, however, this fact about me has completely changed. For a while, I was actually counting the number of days I DIDN’T cry because they were so infrequent.

In that time, my heart has been opening up in amazing ways. I feel more. I’m not as deadened and detached emotionally as I was most of my life. I feel everything more… both good and bad. It has been a tenderizing and a reawakening of my heart. I experience God more truly. I love more deeply. And I receive in ways that I could not before.

Had none of this changed, I don’t know what the last two weeks would have looked like. Perhaps I would have been more numb and detached. Perhaps I would have pushed the pain away and left it hidden and rotting somewhere deep inside… to be dealt with much further down the road in a significantly messier healing process.

Instead, I feel it. By the grace of God, I have lost those instincts that kept my heart locked down and “safe”. I still fight the temptation to shut down… but my heart is too alive now to let that deadening numbness overtake it again. And so I hurt a lot. I feel the pain more deeply than I ever knew that pain could be felt. And God meets me in that broken place.

In the last few days, it has been amazing, the things that have made me cry. Some of it makes sense–reminders and realizations of what I have lost. And then there are the tears that make no sense. I’m crying and I don’t have a clue why (apart from a few obvious guesses as to the general reason). I’m learning to be ok with that, though… not knowing.

Everything is different now that she is gone. Within the first hour of getting that phone call, I knew this would be true. Now I am experiencing that drastically altered reality.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted”is far more meaningful to me than a simple recommendation that we live in mourning over our sins because it leads to blessing. I am not going to try to completely shatter such an interpretation of Matthew 5 (…right now). However, I do admit that I am generally opposed to an if-then interpretation of the beatitudes. (Such mourning and brokenness is quite biblical, for sure. But I don’t believe that is the point Jesus is getting at in these words.) The beatitudes are blessings, not commandments.

It is a promise. It is a message of hope to the hurting and the broken. I am mourning right now. God sees it, and He says that I will be comforted.

Perhaps it is our general refusal to truly mourn that blinds us from seeing how profoundly meaningful and hopeful these words are. Perhaps those life-long habits of shutting our hearts down when it comes to pain have kept us from realizing our need for comfort. Perhaps a straight-forward interpretation of these words (those who are now mourning will be comforted) is generally meaningless to us because we don’t know how to mourn. Or we don’t realize how much we really are hurting (if we would allow ourselves to feel).

I truly believe that this is what Jesus is talking about in these opening words to the sermon on the mount. He is talking about the promises of the Kingdom. He is talking about the day when “God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

They are the words of hope that give us the strength to trust Him and press into the commands that follow in the rest of those three chapters. It is the hope that allows us to truly persevere.

All that I can do right now is lean on His goodness and trust His promises. I know who He is… I know what He has spoken… and I know that it will come to pass.

OK… when you think of Job’s friends, I’m sure that you aren’t suddenly overwhelmed with warm fuzzies. I mean, at the end of the book, didn’t Job have to intercede for them lest the Lord deal with them according to their folly?

But… if you look at the end of Job 2… Job’s friends were doing pretty good. It was just opening their mouths that got them in trouble. I mean…  who couldn’t use a few friends like this:

And when they raised their eyes from afar, and did not recognize him, they lifted their voices and wept; and each one tore his robe and sprinkled dust on his head toward heaven. So they sat down with him on the ground seven days and seven nights, and no one spoke a word to him, for they saw that his grief was very great.

A few weeks ago, some friends and I were discussing this, and I mentioned that I would love to have friends like that in difficult times. When someone you love is hurting, it is hard to sit there knowing that you don’t have answers for them or the solution to all of their problems. Sitting in silence takes humility. It is an immensely difficult thing to do.

Well… Sunday night/Monday morning, I found that I have friends who are willing to do just that.

When I got the news of my mother’s death, it only took a couple of seconds before Sarah and Audra were at my side… holding me as I wept on the phone (and after I finally hung up). We had all been praying for her before the call came, so it didn’t take much to figure out what had just happened.

In the minutes that followed, those friends made lot of difficult calls for me. And then they just sat with me in silence. Praying with me… crying with me. And I am so grateful for that time. It meant more to me than I could rightly describe.

We didn’t sit in silence forever. Eventually there was some light conversation. And then Clay Edwards proved his absolute brilliance yet again…

Clay asked if he could ask me a few questions. With a little hesitation, I replied, “Why not?” By the time he had asked the first question, I knew that I really liked where it was going: “Do you like dark chocolate, white chocolate, or milk chocolate?” In the end, that may have been the best line of questioning I’ve ever been hit with.

Travis and Jessica arranged my flight and bought my ticket for me. I probably would have had a complete breakdown if I’d had to stop and try to do that myself. (And I have no idea how they payed for it… but they tremendously blessed me in that.)

With the information that Clay had gathered, he and a couple of the girls (Amanda and Anna) ran off to do some speed-shopping before I had to catch my plane. They brought me a pretty amazing care package before I had to leave. A care package that has been greatly utilized since I got to Texas.

So… to the friends who were there with me last night… the ones who sat in silence… the ones who made all of those difficult phone calls for me… the ones who got out of bed to come and sit with me… the ones who helped me pack my overloaded suitcases… the ones who drove to the airport with me… all of you. Thank you.

Sarah, Audra, Kirk, Travis, Jessica, Matthias, Amanda, Misty, Anna, Lauren, Clay, Wendy, Stacey, Becca… thank you. Truly. You have all been amazing friends to me. (Misty and I sat at the airport and talked about what an amazing community God has placed me in.) And to those who sent text messages and left messages… thank you. Your prayers are of immeasurable value to me.

(By the way… lets not get into a “You idiot, I know everything you know…” debate like Job and his friends did in the following 30 or so chapters.)